An initial study of knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) of pesticides use among oil palm workers in Johor

An awareness of possible risk factor in pesticides, by changing attitude towards the correct technique during spraying and changing behavior can increase safety of workers safety as well as performance. However, there is a limited study and not highlighted deeply in knowledge, attitude and practices of workers in palm oil plantation issue. Therefore , the objective of this paper is to identify the relationship between knowledge, attitude and practices of pesticides among the plantation workers. The quantitative method were used in this paper whereby 132 respondents as pesticide sprayer which represent 90% of the population of palm oil workers in Johor. The result of spearman correlation indicates that there is significant relationship between knowledge and practices. It shows the common pattern of high knowledge resulting high practices of the workers during spraying the pesticides at plantation. There is no relationship between knowledge and attitude and between attitude and practice of the workers at the workplace. This paper shows that knowledge need to be strengthen in agricultural communities of Johor in order to reduce health problem and sosial issue statistic and prevent for any future accident. Human exposure to pesticides is an important health and sosial issue as it usually results in serious health problems such as stroke, epilepsy, respiratory disorders and cancer. Death has been known to occur in some places as a result of exposures to pesticides. Therefore, more impact knowledge-focused programs need to be arranged and implemented to inculcate the better awareness of pesticides among palm oil workers, as without knowledge, people may become less careful and therefore are exposed to pesticide poisoning and other long term exposure illness in the future