Impact of - IDL-BNC @ IDRC - International Development Research ...

ody temperature. Knowing this, cases of workers reporting "no annoyance"
or "resistance to bathing immediately" can be explained more fully. For the
social scientist, understanding the rationale behind responses is essential
because the education process attempts to modify ways of thinking, not just
a limited number of practices.
The results of the study of self-diagnosis in the population that used DNOC
were poor. Only 2 of 15 cases reported any annoyance at the end of the work
day and they were not correlated with the level of DNOC in the blood. More
instances of annoyance were reported among the 135 people who did not
usually use pesticides than among those who had used DNOC in the past (20%
said they were bothered after using DNOC). For the second phase of the
project, the time of clinical observation and blood sampling was extended to
24 h after DNOC application.
This raises a point related to the process of self-diagnosis, i.e., the concept of
"normal." Self-diagnosis is the identification of an illness by individuals who
recognize in themselves certain symptoms or signs of that illness. However,
what individuals take to be a normal state of health directly affects their
self-diagnosis ability.
For example, if a grower thinks that it is normal (i.e., logical and not problematic)
to find at the end of a day that he is "suffocated" and "hot" because DNOC
is also "hot," he may not report any symptoms when asked "did you experience
any health effects the day you applied DNOC?" For the grower, the
so-called "abnormal" state is considered normal. It is expected and does not
cause alarm, even if body temperature is elevated more than after prolonged
physical exercise.
Only when the logic by which growers interpret all aspects of their contact
with DNOC is understood can researchers begin to piece together an accurate
assessment of self-diagnosis. Competing concepts of normality must be recognized.
In the case of the normalities employed by the physicians (the
statistical normality and the deontological normality), there is a consciousness
of the difference. In the case of the growers, there is only the consciousness of
a normality, which may deviate from medical concepts.
The project team encountered several other difficulties. The agricultural season
in Mala traditionally begins in March-May and ends in October-November.
The research team began gathering data in mid-April. However, irregular
temperatures forced the growers to move the time of DNOC application ahead
to March and the beginning of April when the research team was still engaged
in the design stage of the project.
As a consequence, it was often not possible to establish the exact date of DNOC
application. The growers knew only approximate dates. The decision to apply
DNOC was often taken only I or 2 days in advance, depending upon the state
of blossoming, weather conditions, and the availability of water and labourers.
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