Fat and happy? Two household insecticides, now banned, were associated with lower than average weights at birth.
exposure to insect repellents may be the decrease in the size of newborns? A new study suggests that happening in New York until two pesticides were banned 4 years ago. But the link is confirmed yet.
Scientists worry low birth weight because it correlates with a host of misdeeds such as low IQ. Maternal smoking is a factor that can lead to smaller babies, and pesticides are a suspect. In 1998, researchers from Columbia Robin Whyatt University Frederica Perera, and co-workers tested the umbilical cord blood of 314 babies Dominican and African American mothers for levels of chlorpyrifos and diazinon, organophosphates that have until was recently found in sprays insecticide home.
In a paper published online this week by Environmental Health Perspectives ( EHP ), the team reports that infants with levels of pesticides were higher shorter and weighed, on average, almost a quarter of a kilogram less than those with no signs of pesticides. Most striking among babies born after the ban took effect, blood levels decreased and the link with birth size have disappeared. "This is evidence of a relationship of cause and effect" - as has already been shown in animal studies, said Perera
Others are more cautious .. Epidemiologist Matthew Longnecker Institute National science environmental health points out that no association between chlorpyrifos exposure and birth weight was found in two new studies in the press EHP , one in California and one in new York City. But the University of California, Berkeley epidemiologist Brenda Eskenazi, who led one of them, says he has found a link between organophosphate biomarkers in the urine of mothers and reduce the gestation time . She thinks that differences in exposure measurements may help explain the discrepant results. Still, she said, "the jury is still out" on the risks that pesticides pose to the developing fetus.
Related Sites
Center Columbia Children's Environmental Health
environmental Protection Agency chlorpyrifos page
page Natural Resources Defense Council on insecticides
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