23
Dec
Review Links Exposure to Pesticides During Military Service to Negative Mental Health Outcomes
(Beyond Pesticides, December 23, 2025) A literature review of military personnel reveals broad evidence linking their toxic exposure to poorer mental health outcomes. The review, written by medical professionals and researchers throughout the U.S. and published in Medical Care, analyzes the existing literature on associations between military environmental exposures (MEEs) to contaminants, including pesticides, and mental health (MH) outcomes. “We used evidence mapping methodology to systematically search MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, and PTSDpubs for studies of toxic exposure during military service and psychiatric outcomes, which included psychiatric diagnoses, psychiatric symptoms, and neurocognitive functioning,” the authors explain. The 49 studies in the review, covering chemical exposures for military members, involve chemical munitions from the Gulf War era and Agent Orange from the Vietnam War era that are associated with symptoms of depression, PTSD, and anxiety, among others. “Overall, available evidence suggests that veterans reporting environmental toxic exposures may report relatively high levels of mental health needs,” the researchers report. They continue: “To date, no studies have synthesized the existing literature linking MEEs to MH outcomes. In this review, we systematically organize and describe peer-reviewed literature studying associations between MEEs and MH and neurocognitive outcomes (ie, diagnoses and symptoms). Our review focused on […]
