CHICAGO (Reuters) - Babies exposed to pesticides before birth may have significantly lower intelligence scores by age 7 than children who were not exposed, three separate studies published on Thursday said.
Results from the studies -- two in New York and one in an agricultural community in California -- suggest prenatal exposure to pesticides can have a lasting effect on intelligence.
In one study, a team at the University of California Berkeley found that every tenfold increase in prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides corresponded with a 5.5 point drop in overall IQ scores in children by age 7.
"That difference could mean, on average, more kids being shifted into the lower end of the spectrum of learning, and more kids needing special services in school," Berkeley's Brenda Eskenazi, who led one of the three studies published online in Environmental Health Perspectives, said in a statement.
The two other studies -- one at Mount Sinai Medical Center and the other at Columbia University -- also examined prenatal exposure to pesticides and IQ in children at age 7.
The teams at Berkeley and Mount Sinai sampled pesticide residues in maternal urine, while the team at Columbia tested umbilical cord blood levels of chlorpyrifos, part of a class of pesticides known as organophosphates that are known to be toxic to brain cells.
Until it was banned for indoor residential use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2001, chlorpyrifos was one of the most widely used insecticides for residential pest control.
In the Columbia study, researchers sampled 265 New York City minority children born before the ban. The higher levels of chlorpyrifos in the babies' umbilical cord blood were linked with lower performance on two different IQ tests.
Children who were in the highest 25 percent of exposure levels scored 2.7 points lower on IQ tests than children whose exposures were in the lowest quarter of the study.
The UC Berkeley study involved 329 children whose mothers enrolled when they were pregnant.
Urine samples were taken twice during pregnancy from the mothers and after birth from the children at regular intervals between ages 6 months and 5 years.
The team said while prenatal exposure to pesticides were significantly linked with childhood IQ, pesticide exposure after birth was not, suggesting exposure during fetal brain development was a more critical period than childhood exposure.
Children in the UC Berkeley study were exposed to pesticides in 1999 through 2000. Since the 2001 ban, use of organophosphates in the United States has fallen by more than 50 percent, but agricultural use of chlorpyrifos is still permitted.
"It is vitally important that we continue to monitor the levels of exposure in potentially vulnerable populations, especially in pregnant women in agricultural communities, as their infants may continue to be at risk," Dr. Robin Whyatt of Columbia said in a statement.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Xavier Briand)
Replies
Speaking with Saskatchewan farmers, they tell me that they know the chemicals they use are poisoning their own children, but they have no choice, they say, as if they do not use the poisons recommended by Monsanto etc, they will perhaps have no crops and lose their farms. They say their kids never had allergies, attention deficits disorder, and the many behavioral disorders seen nowadays, until they started using the poisons that were forced upon them by big government and big businesses.
Similarly, discussion with an oncologist, cancer specialist, tells me that the cancer rate is now 100%. If you live long enough, you will definitely die of cancer. Flouoride, aspartame, MSG, unlimited poisonous chemicals, poisonous hormone-altering ink used on all receipts; the list goes on and on like a chemical weapons inventory; on your skin and in your food.
The demons have instituted these programs to reduce, dumb down, and control the world's population as their slaves. They are currently actively destroying the middle classes worldwide to create the super-rich demonic ruling castes, and the rest of us, we are to be their slaves. A middle class with any wealth represents resistance to their takeover, so all middle class persosns will be reduced to poor slaves asap. Obama's recent move to further destroy the middle class persons by raising onorous destructively high taxes on small businesses and increasing tax breaks to large corporations which he represents, is one small example.
Hindus, Buddhists, all non-RomanCatholics are to be eliminated, or reduced to slave status by Jeusits who worship Lucifer. The Vietnam war was an instance of the Catholics under the influence of the Jesuits attempting a religious purge in order to enforce their bogus Luciferian so-called Christianity on the East Asian population. They also intend to reduce the world's population by 95% ,by soft and hard kill methods, as outlined by the U.N.
The U.N. is to be their controlling vehicle to enforce total control and complete elimination of human rights by the Luciferians. Our spiritual master was poisoned by them, and their minions have seized control of ISKCON, turning it into a means of reducing and controlling the Hare Krishna movement.
Adi Keasva, sannyasi in the 70's, was son of a CIA agent and himself suspected as being one of the main connections to the Rockefeller / Rothschilde controlled CIA in committing murder, guru hatya, along with other cabal agents; Tamal, Caru, Bhavananada, Jayapotato, Satadhanya, Adi Kesava and other suspected Judases. The movement is still fully under their demonic control, and therefore we are obliged to reveal their demonic influences and ongoing plot.
This information has become revealed after years of full-time intensive research, and I can document all of it if required to do so. No one need agree with me, of course, as this is a political opinion, not sastra!