Os impactos na saúde da comunidade quilombola de Córrego Fundo em Brejinho de Nazaré - TO, frente às mudanças ambientais causadas pelo avanço do agronegócio

Abstract

The expansion of agribusiness in the Cerrado biome has produced far-reaching socio environmental transformations in the territories of traditional communities, undermining living conditions, health, and cultural reproduction of these groups. This study aimed to assess the health impacts on the Quilombola Community of Córrego Fundo, located in the municipality of Brejinho de Nazaré, Tocantins, Brazil, resulting from environmental changes caused by the advance of agricultural monocultures. The research adopted a mixed quali-quantitative approach, structured around three complementary instruments: a census-based sociodemographic questionnaire applied to 18 of the 23 identified households, individual semi structured interviews through snowball sampling, and a focus group with seven female heads of household. Data collection took place between July and September 2025, following approval by the Research Ethics Committee of the Universidade Federal do Tocantins (CAAE nº 87051925.5.0000.5519). Qualitative data were analyzed using Bardin’s Content Analysis (2011) and quantitative data through descriptive statistics, with results integrated through methodological triangulation. The census revealed a predominantly elderly population (83.3% aged over 50), with low educational attainment (72.2% with incomplete primary education) and low income (66.7% earning up to one minimum wage). Chronic disease prevalence was high: 83.3% of households reported at least one member with a chronic condition, particularly diabetes mellitus (55.6%) and systemic arterial hypertension (50.0%). Qualitative analysis identified five thematic categories in interviews, perception of environmental changes, perceived climate alterations, pesticide exposure, illness patterns, and rupture with the traditional way of life, and four in the focus group, including public sanitation policy failures and erosion of traditional therapeutic knowledge. Triangulation revealed consistent convergence across all three instruments: high chronic disease prevalence, near-universal perception of environmental changes and their health effects, involuntary and recurrent pesticide exposure through aerial spraying, and structural water vulnerability combined with precarious access to health services. It is concluded that the community experiences a process of collective illness that is environmentally caused, racially distributed, and epidemiologically invisible to conventional health surveillance systems, a process that can only be adequately understood through an approach that articulates territory, race, class, and environment as constitutive dimensions of the social determination of health.