ANTECEDENTS: Diverse studies have demonstrated the risks and damage that pesticides represent to human health by their level of toxicity, high exposure levels in agricultural work, and in the work environment, inadequate handling, lack of knowledge in the population, and minimal protection measures on the part of the workers. Among the effects on health, they can present as intoxication, allergies, conjunctivitis, dermatitis, alterations in the central nervous system, damages to the liver, carcinogens, reproductive damage, in utero fetal damage, mutations, sterility, anemia, and effects on the immune system (González and Alvarado 1996; De Celis et al.1999; Rivero 2001; Pastor 2002; Finkelman 2004; Rangel 2005; Rangel and Garibay 2006; Córdoba 2006; Payán, Feria, De Celis, 2009).

It is important to implement schemes of organization and coordination of the sectors which attend to this problem to generate improved capacity in the population with the object of preventing and reducing the risks and damages to health before high levels of exposure to pesticides.

OBJECTIVE. To develop programs to communicate the risks in order to prevent and reduce risks and damage to the health of populations exposed to pesticides.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES. To design programs of risk communication that consider the principal actions, strategies, messages, information, means, times and participants (agricultural workers, families, and community groups) to prevent and reduce risks and damage to health by the exposure to pesticides.