The workers in this fourth case, like in the last one, are also subject to a great deal of occupational exposure. Both the inhalation and dermal exposures from mixing, loading, or applying the pesticide could be very significant, depending on the protective clothing and equipment that these workers use.

Unlike fieldworkers reentering a treated field where airborne residues usually have already settled down, inhalation exposure may be an important source for agricultural handlers working with the pesticide, especially when the chemical is a dust or has a high vapor pressure. (Again, the calculations of the doses, if any significant, from drinking water, ambient air, and dietary intake, are essentially the same as those discussed in the first case.)

The typical alternative to worker biomonitoring is to measure the residues on small patches attached to certain regions of the worker's body. Measurements from these passive patch dosimeters would then be extrapolated to dermal exposure for the entire body regions, and eventually to the whole body. Still another alternative is to use the whole body garment as the dosimeter.

Where chemical-specific measurements on handler exposure are not available, data from other studies are often used as surrogate. The Exposure Handlers Exposure Database (PHED, 1995; Hamey et al., in press) and the European Predictive Operator Exposure Model (EUROPOEM, 1996; Hamey et al., in press) were developed for this very purpose. Built into these databases were the basic calculation algorithm concept that handler exposure is specific to the task involved and proportional to the amount of chemical handled, rather than to the specific chemical handled.