Better living through chemistry?

Looks like pesticides may not be completely harmless to people after all.

Exposure to organophosphate pesticides, especially prenatally, significantly increase susceptibility to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children born to Mexican American women in the Salinas Valley, an area of intensive agriculture and heavy pesticide use.

These latest findings support previous results from a study published in the June issue of Pediatrics and reported by Medscape Medical News at that time that showed US children with higher levels of organophosphate pesticide metabolites in their urine were more likely to have ADHD compared with their counterparts with lower levels.

The war on insects has some collateral damage to people and it is strange to me that no one wants to admit that. Most propenents of pesticide use seem happy to ignore any science that shows potential harm to people.

The other issue is that most insect species build a tolerance for pesticides pretty quickly, humans don’t seem to evolve as quickly; long after the bugs have adapted to a certain pesticide people are still suffering from the consequences.

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2 Responses to Better living through chemistry?

  1. so a million kids in Africa dying each year by mosquito-borne malaria is a good status quo for ya?

  2. John Rove says:

    mosquito nets prevent most of those deaths and don’t result in the poisoning of millions more.

    please don’t make me go through all the peer reviewed articles on DDT again

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