Organophosphates may be more dangerous to small children than previously believed.
Some infants may be far more vulnerable to organophosphate pesticides than previously believed, according to a paper published in Pharmacogenetics and Genomics (2006, 16, 183–190).
The new study “raises the question of whether current standards for safe levels of pesticide exposure are sufficiently protective of a vulnerable population,” says Nina Holland, an adjunct professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and coauthor of the paper.
Current U.S. EPA standards require an extra 10-fold safety factor to protect children compared with adults. But the new study shows higher than previously believed.
Of the 130 Latina women who participated in the study with their newborns, more than 40% worked in agriculture during their pregnancies. The Berkeley researchers measured levels of paraoxonase 1, an enzyme that breaks down the toxic metabolites of organophosphates, as a marker for pesticide susceptibility