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In reply to the discussion: "Environmental, State-Level Regulatory Factors Affect Incidence of Autism & Intellectual Disability" [View all]proverbialwisdom
(4,959 posts)17. Related.
Last edited Tue Mar 18, 2014, 02:47 PM - Edit history (1)
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/
The Toxins That Threaten Our Brains
Leading scientists recently identified a dozen chemicals as being responsible for widespread behavioral and cognitive problems. But the scope of the chemical dangers in our environment is likely even greater. Why children and the poor are most susceptible to neurotoxic exposure that may be costing the U.S. billions of dollars and immeasurable peace of mind.
James Hamblin, MD
MARCH 18, 2014
Forty-one million IQ points. Thats what Dr. David Bellinger determined Americans have collectively forfeited as a result of exposure to lead, mercury, and organophosphate pesticides. In a 2012 paper published by the National Institutes of Health, Bellinger, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, compared intelligence quotients among children whose mothers had been exposed to these neurotoxins while pregnant to those who had not. Bellinger calculates a total loss of 16.9 million IQ points due to exposure to organophosphates, the most common pesticides used in agriculture.
Last month, more research brought concerns about chemical exposure and brain health to a heightened pitch. Philippe Grandjean, Bellingers Harvard colleague, and Philip Landrigan, dean for global health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, announced to some controversy in the pages of a prestigious medical journal that a silent pandemic of toxins has been damaging the brains of unborn children. The experts named 12 chemicalssubstances found in both the environment and everyday items like furniture and clothingthat they believed to be causing not just lower IQs but ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Pesticides were among the toxins they identified.
So you recommend that pregnant women eat organic produce? I asked Grandjean, a Danish-born researcher who travels around the world studying delayed effects of chemical exposure on children.
Thats what I advise people who ask me, yes. Its the best way of preventing exposure to pesticides. Grandjean estimates that there are about 45 organophosphate pesticides on the market, and most have the potential to damage a developing nervous system.
Landrigan had issued that same warning, unprompted, when I spoke to him the week before. I advise pregnant women to try to eat organic because it reduces their exposure by 80 or 90 percent, he told me. These are the chemicals I really worry about in terms of American kids, the organophosphate pesticides like chlorpyrifos.
For decades, chlorpyrifos, marketed by Dow Chemical beginning in 1965, was the most widely used insect killer in American homes. Then, in 1995, Dow was fined $732,000 by the EPA for concealing more than 200 reports of poisoning related to chlorpyrifos. It paid the fine and, in 2000, withdrew chlorpyrifos from household products. Today, chlorpyrifos is classified as very highly toxic to birds and freshwater fish, and moderately toxic to mammals, but it is still used widely in agriculture on food and non-food crops, in greenhouses and plant nurseries, on wood products and golf courses.
Landrigan has the credentials of some superhero vigilante Doctor America: a Harvard-educated pediatrician, a decorated retired captain of the U.S. Naval Reserve, and a leading physician-advocate for children's health as it relates to the environment. After September 11, he made news when he testified before Congress in disagreement with the EPAs assessment that asbestos particles stirred into clouds of debris were too small to pose any real threat. Landrigan cited research from mining townships (including Asbestos, Quebec) and argued that even the smallest airborne asbestos fibers could penetrate deeply into a childs lungs.
<>
The Toxins That Threaten Our Brains
Leading scientists recently identified a dozen chemicals as being responsible for widespread behavioral and cognitive problems. But the scope of the chemical dangers in our environment is likely even greater. Why children and the poor are most susceptible to neurotoxic exposure that may be costing the U.S. billions of dollars and immeasurable peace of mind.
James Hamblin, MD
MARCH 18, 2014
Forty-one million IQ points. Thats what Dr. David Bellinger determined Americans have collectively forfeited as a result of exposure to lead, mercury, and organophosphate pesticides. In a 2012 paper published by the National Institutes of Health, Bellinger, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, compared intelligence quotients among children whose mothers had been exposed to these neurotoxins while pregnant to those who had not. Bellinger calculates a total loss of 16.9 million IQ points due to exposure to organophosphates, the most common pesticides used in agriculture.
Last month, more research brought concerns about chemical exposure and brain health to a heightened pitch. Philippe Grandjean, Bellingers Harvard colleague, and Philip Landrigan, dean for global health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, announced to some controversy in the pages of a prestigious medical journal that a silent pandemic of toxins has been damaging the brains of unborn children. The experts named 12 chemicalssubstances found in both the environment and everyday items like furniture and clothingthat they believed to be causing not just lower IQs but ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Pesticides were among the toxins they identified.
So you recommend that pregnant women eat organic produce? I asked Grandjean, a Danish-born researcher who travels around the world studying delayed effects of chemical exposure on children.
Thats what I advise people who ask me, yes. Its the best way of preventing exposure to pesticides. Grandjean estimates that there are about 45 organophosphate pesticides on the market, and most have the potential to damage a developing nervous system.
Landrigan had issued that same warning, unprompted, when I spoke to him the week before. I advise pregnant women to try to eat organic because it reduces their exposure by 80 or 90 percent, he told me. These are the chemicals I really worry about in terms of American kids, the organophosphate pesticides like chlorpyrifos.
For decades, chlorpyrifos, marketed by Dow Chemical beginning in 1965, was the most widely used insect killer in American homes. Then, in 1995, Dow was fined $732,000 by the EPA for concealing more than 200 reports of poisoning related to chlorpyrifos. It paid the fine and, in 2000, withdrew chlorpyrifos from household products. Today, chlorpyrifos is classified as very highly toxic to birds and freshwater fish, and moderately toxic to mammals, but it is still used widely in agriculture on food and non-food crops, in greenhouses and plant nurseries, on wood products and golf courses.
Landrigan has the credentials of some superhero vigilante Doctor America: a Harvard-educated pediatrician, a decorated retired captain of the U.S. Naval Reserve, and a leading physician-advocate for children's health as it relates to the environment. After September 11, he made news when he testified before Congress in disagreement with the EPAs assessment that asbestos particles stirred into clouds of debris were too small to pose any real threat. Landrigan cited research from mining townships (including Asbestos, Quebec) and argued that even the smallest airborne asbestos fibers could penetrate deeply into a childs lungs.
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"Environmental, State-Level Regulatory Factors Affect Incidence of Autism & Intellectual Disability" [View all]
proverbialwisdom
Mar 2014
OP
STUDY: “Environment and incentives affect the incidence of autism and intellectual disability"
proverbialwisdom
Mar 2014
#2
Nice reporting in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, WaPo, LA Times... Oh, wait, NOTHING. (nt)
proverbialwisdom
Mar 2014
#5
Actually, here's explicit validation from GoTeamKate: "Stop Making the Conversation Controversial."
proverbialwisdom
Mar 2014
#7
Study suggests potential association between soy formula and seizures in children with autism.
proverbialwisdom
Mar 2014
#10
Dr Martha Herbert: "A Whole Body Approach to Brain Health," 3/21 @ 3pm. Free and open to the public!
proverbialwisdom
Mar 2014
#18
PLOS ONE - Soy Infant Formula and Seizures in Children with Autism: A Retrospective Study
proverbialwisdom
Mar 2014
#13
If this was ho-hum nothin', paradoxically, it'd be plastered all over the media.
proverbialwisdom
Mar 2014
#15