Pesticides and Children

Pesticides and Children

By Dr Arvind Kumar

According to a recent report published in Science News, children exposed in the womb to substantial levels of neurotoxic pesticides have somewhat lower IQs by the time they enter school than do kids with virtually no exposure. A trio of studies screened women for compounds in blood or urine that mark exposure to organophosphate pesticides such as chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion. These bug killers, which can cross the human placenta, work by inhibiting brain-signaling compounds. Although the pesticides’ residential use was phased out in 2000, spraying on farm fields remains legal. The three new studies began in the late 1990s and followed children through age 7. Pesticide exposures stem from farm work in more than 300 low-income Mexican-American families in California, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and their colleagues report. In two comparably sized New York City populations, exposures likely trace to bug spraying of homes or eating treated produce.

Asserting that there was an amazing degree of consistency in the findings across all three studies, Bruce Lanphear of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver says, and that’s concerning because a drop of seven IQ points “is a big deal. In fact, half of seven IQ points would be a big deal, especially when you see this across a population.”

Each IQ-point drop will add up to extra costs in lost earnings over an individual’s lifetime, he says — and even, potentially, to higher education and other costs to deal with behavioral and learning problems that may occur during childhood.