Pesticides may be linked to autism - study

Campaigners say it is not surprising that powerful chemicals which attack the brains and nerves of insects also harm people because the two share many of the building blocks of life.

Campaigners say it is not surprising that powerful chemicals which attack the brains and nerves of insects also harm people because the two share many of the building blocks of life.

Published Jun 24, 2014

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London - Pregnant women who live near fields sprayed with pesticides may run more than three times the risk of having a child with autism, a study has found.

It is feared that the crop chemicals stunt the development of the unborn child’s brain, setting it up for problems in years to come.

Campaigners say it is not surprising that powerful chemicals which attack the brains and nerves of insects also harm people because the two share many of the building blocks of life.

Researcher Irva Hertz-Picciotto said: “If it were my family, I wouldn’t want to live close to where heavy pesticides are applied.”

However, others cast doubt on the study and said the result could be a statistical blip.

The researchers, from the University of California, Davis, studied almost 1 000 mothers, overlaying their addresses on maps of pesticide use in the area.

Those living within a mile of fields treated with common pesticides called organophosphates saw the odds of having an autistic child raised by around 60 percent.

Exposure in the last three months of pregnancy seemed to be even more damaging. These women were twice as likely to have an autistic child as others.

One particular pesticide, chlorpyrifos, more than trebled the odds, when a woman was exposed to it halfway through her pregnancy, the journal Environmental Health Perspectives reports.

The researchers said exposure to pesticides in the womb may be particularly problematic because the unborn child’s brain may be especially vulnerable.

Although the study was done in the US, many of the chemicals are approved for use in Britain.

The research comes amid concern about rising rates of autism. Today, more than one in 100 British children has autism or a related condition such as Asperger’s Syndrome – a ten-fold increase on 30 years ago.

Elizabeth Salter Green, director of campaign group CHEM Trust, said: “This research is of great concern when one considers the reliance of UK agriculture on pesticides and what appears to be a similarly large increase in autism here as in the US.”

But others stressed that the study did not prove that pesticides cause autism.

Dr Geoff Bird, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, said: “Parents of children with autism are more likely to show autistic-like traits. It may be that parents of autistic children prefer to live in less densely populated places which just happen to be closer to farms which just happen to use pesticides.”

The National Autistic Society also urged caution, saying that the development of autism is much more complicated than the researchers had suggested. - Daily Mail

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