Prospective Investigation of Pesticide Applicators' Health (PIPAH) Study

About the study

The Prospective Investigation of Pesticide Applicators' Health (PIPAH) Study investigates whether there is any evidence of a link between working with pesticides and health. It builds on the work of the Pesticide Users' Health Study by collecting more detailed information about the study participants. In the long term, the information from the study will help to ensure that any risks identified are properly controlled.

The study is funded by HSE and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

It’s a long-term study and currently HSE has not set an end date for it. The data collected will be stored securely for 15 years after the end of the study. This is HSE's standard policy for this type of information. Keeping the data for this period ensures that any findings are traceable for a reasonable time after publication.

How people join the study

People who are certified pesticide users are eligible to join the study.

The study began in 2013, with the help of City & Guilds, by inviting the members of the following registers to take part in the study:

  • National Register of Sprayer Operators (NRoSO)
  • National Amenity Sprayer Operators' Register (NAsOR)

Members of the Pesticide Users' Health Study, were invited to join in 2014.

The study continues to grow as new members of NRoSO join.

Collecting information about participants' health

People who agree to take part are asked to complete a questionnaire asking about:

  • the types of pesticides they have used
  • their health
  • factors that can affect their health such as lifestyle, diet, smoking and alcohol intake

In the future, participants will be asked about pesticide use and particular health conditions.

HSE also obtains data from NHS Digital. Participants’ names, addresses, sex, date of birth and NHS number (if available) are sent to NHS Digital so they can be linked to the relevant data sets. NHS Digital will then provide HSE with cancer data and mortality data including the:

  • date of the event
  • cancer type or cause of death

NHS Digital also tells HSE if a participant has emigrated, so we can follow up the long term health status of study participants.

Participants' data

The data collected by the study is used for health research purposes only and is kept strictly confidential.

The data will be used to investigate whether there is any evidence of a link between working with pesticides and health. The data collected about participants may be provided to researchers running other research studies in HSE or in other organisations. These organisations may be universities or other organisations involved in health research in this country or abroad. The PIPAH Study data may also be pooled with data from similar studies in other countries to study the relationships between pesticides and less common health conditions. Individuals will not be identifiable in any data shared with other approved researchers. The data will not be combined with other information in a way that could identify an individual participant. This study does not use automated decision-making or profiling to make decisions about individuals.

The study findings will be available online in HSE research reports, other published articles and in the study newsletter. The findings will be used to inform future policy.

As a government agency we use personally-identifiable information to conduct research to improve workers' health. As a publicly-funded organisation, we must ensure that it’s in the public interest when we use personally-identifiable information from people who have agreed to take part in research. This means that when they agree to take part in a research study, we will use their data in the ways needed to conduct and analyse the research study. Their rights to access, change or move their information are limited, as we need to manage their information in specific ways for the research to be reliable and accurate. If a participant withdraws from the study, we will keep the information about them that we have already obtained. To safeguard their rights, we will use the minimum personally-identifiable information possible.

Health information is sensitive personal data and is regarded as special category data. Sensitive personal data will only be processed for research purposes.

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled personal data, contact our data protection officer.

More information on how HSE processes data is provided in HSE's Privacy Policy Statement.

If you’re not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing personal data in a way that is not lawful you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

Withdrawing from the study

You can ask to withdraw from all or part of study at any point, using the contact information given at the end of this page. However, HSE will keep the information collected because it will already be part of earlier analyses and published statistics.

These reports do not contain any identifiable data and it’s not possible to remove individual data from them.

Contact us

If you have any questions at all about the research contact us.

Newsletters

PIPAH Study Newsletter, Jan 2025

Previous newsletters and resources (National Archives)

Questionnaires

 

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Updated 2025-12-22