Feed: Slashdot
Feed Link: https://slashdot.org/
---

Title: Common Pesticide Linked To Widespread Brain Abnormalities In Children

Link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/09/03/0...

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: The insecticide
chlorpyrifos is a powerful tool for controlling various pests, making it one
of the most widely used pesticides during the latter half of the 20th
century. Like many pesticides, however, chlorpyrifos lacks precision. In
addition to harming non-target insects like bees, it has also been linked to
health risks for much larger animals -- including us. Now, a new US study
suggests those risks may begin before birth. Humans exposed to chlorpyrifos
prenatally are more likely to exhibit structural brain abnormalities and
reduced motor functions in childhood and adolescence. Progressively higher
prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos was associated with incrementally greater
deviations in brain structure, function, and metabolism in children and
teens, the researchers found, along with poorer measures of motor speed and
motor programming. [...] This supports previous research linking chlorpyrifos
with impaired cognitive function and brain development, but these findings
are the first evidence of widespread and long-lasting molecular, cellular,
and metabolic effects in the brain. "The disturbances in brain tissue and
metabolism that we observed with prenatal exposure to this one pesticide were
remarkably widespread throughout the brain," says first author Bradley
Peterson, a developmental neuroscientist at the University of Southern
California's Keck School of Medicine. Senior author Virginia Rauh added: "It
is vitally important that we continue to monitor the levels of exposure in
potentially vulnerable populations, especially in pregnant women in
agricultural communities, as their infants continue to be at risk." The
report notes that the EPA banned residential use of chlorpyrifos in 2001 but
the pesticide is still used in agriculture around the world. The findings
have been published in the journal JAMA Neurology.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

---
VRSS v2.1.180528