Public health professionals have discovered there is enough proof that prenatal exposure to broadly employed insecticides (dubbed as organophosphates) puts kids at jeopardy for neurodevelopmental diseases. In a scientific call to action and evaluation posted in PLOS Medicine, the scientists call for urgent government interference to eliminate all organophosphates.
“There is compelling proof that exposure of pregnant females to very low amount of organophosphate pesticides is linked with low IQs and problems with memory, learning, or attention in their kids,” claimed Irva Hertz-Picciotto, lead author and professor of public health sciences. Hertz-Picciotto is also researcher with the UC Davis MIND Institute and the director of the UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center.
“Even though chlorpyrifos (a single organophosphate) has been in the national limelight, our review highlights the whole class of these compounds,” claimed Hertz-Picciotto. Originally designed as weapons of war and nerve gases, organophosphates now are employed to control insects at golf courses, farms, schools, and shopping malls.
On a related note, a research on 98 babies displayed that those exposed to drugs in the womb such as Seroxat and Prozac had irregular development in regions of the brain connected to emotions. The mothers were in the age between 18 and 45 and the disparities in their kid’s brains were vivid. This stayed the case even after other factors comprising race, age, household income, ethnicity, psychiatric disorders, the mother’s education, and genetics were taken into consideration.
Columbia University’s Dr Claudia Lugo in New York thinks that the drugs drive levels of serotonin in the brains of fetus. She claimed: “Further research is needed to better clarify the impacts of gestational SSRI exposure on yet-to-be-developed brain and later on life vulnerability to cognitive, depressive, and motor abnormalities. Researchers in New York from Columbia University discovered that the drugs elevated levels of serotonin in the brain of the unborn child.