It's time that research identified how phthalates are getting into our children's bodies so that policymakers might consider regulations to limit such tainting.
After all, IQ is nothing to play with. And parents can't be expected to make sound choices to protect their young unless they get solid data on sources of pollutants and possible risks from them.
A new study examines cognitive risks from phthalates. The study wasn't big — including just 667 third- and fourth-graders. But it does cover a broad and nationally representative cross-section of South Korea's youngsters. Moreover, whatever changes occurred in these kids might well develop elsewhere. And that's because residues of diethylhexyl phthalate, or DEHP — the phthalate that appeared most neurotoxic to these children — show up in people throughout the developed world, including the United States.
Soo-Churl Cho and Hee-Jung Yoo of Seoul National University College of Medicine and their colleagues recruited participants from nine grade schools...Each child took the Korean version of a widely accepted IQ test known as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, or WISC. So did the kids' moms, which offered the researchers — from four Korean medical schools — a gauge for the genetic component to each child's IQ.
DEHP metabolites, or breakdown products, ranged from a minimum of 0.5 micrograms per liter to 445 µg/l. Two DEHP metabolites were measured and summed for each child. Then the kids were split into four groups on the basis of these metabolites. In an upcoming issue of Environmental Health Perspectives published online, ahead of print, the researchers report finding that as the amount of DEHP's breakdown products in urine climbed, a child's IQ fell a small amount....on the full-scale IQ, boys in the highest DEHP-exposure group scored 1 to 2 points lower than did those in the other three groups...A more limited IQ risk emerged for dibutyl phthalate — a plasticizer and solvent used widely, from polyvinyl chloride and inks to adhesives and cosmetics. Here too, block-design scores fell as levels of DBP's breakdown product in urine rose.
Although about a dozen other breakdown products of phthalates can also be measured, the researchers ignored them because none were very abundant in these kids.
For a little perspective, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that a 2005 study out of Korea found that children there tended to have mean DEHP metabolite values about triple those measured in U.S. children.
What to make of the findings? Well, the kids' values were controlled on the basis of their moms' IQ scores. That may or may not be the right thing to do, the researchers admit. For instance, the moms' IQs might have influenced — through smart or not-so-smart diet and product choices — DEHP exposures in themselves and their children.
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