Dramatic deficits in brain function are seen in rural children with long-term exposure to agricultural chemicals, compared with children not similarly exposed, a study finds.
A report in the June issue of Environmental Health Perspectives raises "very important concerns about the toxic effects of pesticides on children's nervous systems," says pediatrician Philip Landrigan of Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Anthropologist Elizabeth A. Guillette of the University of Arizona looked at two groups of 4- and 5-year-olds in the Yaqui Valley of Sonora, Mexico. The children share a genetic and cultural background, eat the same foods and drink the same water.
But 33 of those studied live in the valley, a farming area where pesticides are applied up to 45 times between planting and harvesting, while 17 children live in the foothills, where their only exposure to pesticides is annual spraying of DDT to combat malaria. Some of the pesticides used in Mexico have been banned in the USA, but many others are used regularly in this country, Guillette says.
She found few differences in appearance among the children, but those who live in the valley had significantly less stamina and hand-eye coordination, poorer short-term memory and were less adept at drawing a person than were children in the foothills.
"I don't want to say at this point it is the pesticides" that caused the differences, she says. "We're in the process of ruling other things out or in."
But the study highlights the need for more research, says Bernard Weiss of the Department of Environmental Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. "It doesn't seem a surprise that you would see an effect, knowing what we know about pesticides and the elevated vulnerabilty of the developing brain."
Landrigan, senior adviser in the Environmental Protection Agency's office of Children's Health Protection, says Guillette's study "has to be paid attention to. . . . We have to ask ourselves, 'Is this relevant to children living in farm communities in the U.S.?' "
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