Pesticide exposure during pregnancy may lower kid’s IQ--study
POSTED April 22, 2011 - 16:21 | POSTED BY Dipankar Roy
Last edited by Silky Chandvani on April 22, 2011 - 17:02
Organophosphates, which kills pest by attacking the nervous system, are used on food crops, and are present in trace amounts on berries, green beans, and other fruits and vegetables.
Despite restriction imposed on household usage, organophosphates which are associated with attention deficit and developmental delay can be found in homes and gardens.
Two studies undertaken by researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Columbia University on urban families in New York, and the third carried out by researchers at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, on children in the farmland of Salinas, California, were funded by US government.
Exposure to pesticides
The researchers in one of the New York studies, observed a relation between prenatal exposure to the insecticide chlorpyrifos, most widely used insecticides for residential pest control, and deficiency in IQ and working memory of the children.
The researchers found that high chlorpyrifos-exposed children, scored 5.3 and 2.7 points lower on an IQ and working memory test compared with the lesser exposed.
Mount Sinai study conducted a urine test of the pregnant mothers for organophosphates presence, and found that for every tenfold increase of the pesticide in the urine, children showed a 3 point IQ drop at age 7.
In the Berkeley study, children with highest prenatal exposure scored 7 points lower on IQ tests compared to those with the lowest levels of exposure.
Also,a 5.5 point drop in overall IQ scores was observed in every 10 fold increase in organophosphate exposure.
Wash before you peel
"That's not unlike the decreases we see in children with high lead exposure," said the senior study author, Brenda Eskenazi, Ph.D., a professor of epidemiology and maternal and child health at the University of California, Berkeley.
She added, "It's equivalent to performing six months behind the average."
"It's absolutely important that they have an adequate diet in terms of the health of their child," said Eskenazi, "It's important that people wash their fruits and vegetables really, really well -- and that means even fruit with a peel on it. It should be washed before you peel it."
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