Assessing the need for health status measures.

Because herbicide use was common to the workers in this cohort, we speculated on the biological plausibility of phenoxy acid herbicide exposure and the increased risk of suicide.This was prompted by previous research suggesting central nervous system toxicity from exposure to phenoxy acid herbicides.'We ould be interested in knowing whether phenoxv acid herbicide exposures are relevant to the group studied by Notkola et al and whether further analyses could be carried out taking these exposures into account.We are in the process of extending the follow up of our cohort and shortly hope to report whether the excess has persisted.