I found this article online on politicsdaily.com, pretty scary how pesticides are proven to cause brain damage to children and we are still using them on everything....
*This is only a portion of the article and the bold emphasis was added by me.
Salinas, California: The Salad Bowl of Pesticides
Contributor
SALINAS VALLEY, Calif. – Locals call this place the world's salad bowl. Dole, Naturipe and Fresh Express are here, where much of the global fruit and vegetable trade emerges in neat green fields just over the hills from the Pacific Coast.
The difficulties facing migrant workers who plant and pick the crops is an old story. But in Salinas, a new story is emerging -- one with serious implications for the rest of the country and with an ending that has yet to be written.
It is here that University of California, Berkeley public health professor Brenda Eskenazi and her colleagues have spent the past 12 years studying mothers and children who are exposed to pesticides used in the fields.
The Center for Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) is a joint project of UC Berkeley, the Natividad Medical Center, Clinica de Salud Del Valle de Salinas and other community organizations. Its goal is to assess exposure to pesticides and other pollutants in pregnant women and young children to determine the effects on their health, and to try to prevent contact with the chemicals.
After forming partnerships with local health care providers, the researchers were able to recruit 600 women, who submitted to a series of tests to measure pesticide levels in their bodies. Investigators tracked the women throughout their pregnancies, waiting at hospitals as babies were born to collect the umbilical cord blood. As the children grew, Eskenazi and her team also charted their growth, mental development and general health.
This group is now 10 ½ years old, and Eskenazi's work has set off alarms among public health officials. She and her colleagues have found that at age 2, the children of mothers who had the highest levels of organophosphate pesticide metabolites in their blood had the worst mental development in the group. They also had the most cases of pervasive developmental disorder.
At age 5, the children whose mothers were most exposed during pregnancy had poorer attention spans compared to those born to a mother who had lower levels of pesticide metabolites in their urine. Metabolites, as referred to here, are compounds that are formed as a chemical breaks down in the body. They are evidence that someone was exposed to a chemical.
"We have very, very high reports by the mother of behaviors consistent with pervasive developmental disorder," said Eskenazi at a recent neurotoxicology conference. "These include signs like the child is afraid to try new things, can't stand anything out of place, and avoid looking others in the eye. This is considered to be autism spectrum behavior."
The difficulties facing migrant workers who plant and pick the crops is an old story. But in Salinas, a new story is emerging -- one with serious implications for the rest of the country and with an ending that has yet to be written.
It is here that University of California, Berkeley public health professor Brenda Eskenazi and her colleagues have spent the past 12 years studying mothers and children who are exposed to pesticides used in the fields.
The Center for Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) is a joint project of UC Berkeley, the Natividad Medical Center, Clinica de Salud Del Valle de Salinas and other community organizations. Its goal is to assess exposure to pesticides and other pollutants in pregnant women and young children to determine the effects on their health, and to try to prevent contact with the chemicals.
After forming partnerships with local health care providers, the researchers were able to recruit 600 women, who submitted to a series of tests to measure pesticide levels in their bodies. Investigators tracked the women throughout their pregnancies, waiting at hospitals as babies were born to collect the umbilical cord blood. As the children grew, Eskenazi and her team also charted their growth, mental development and general health.This group is now 10 ½ years old, and Eskenazi's work has set off alarms among public health officials. She and her colleagues have found that at age 2, the children of mothers who had the highest levels of organophosphate pesticide metabolites in their blood had the worst mental development in the group. They also had the most cases of pervasive developmental disorder.
At age 5, the children whose mothers were most exposed during pregnancy had poorer attention spans compared to those born to a mother who had lower levels of pesticide metabolites in their urine. Metabolites, as referred to here, are compounds that are formed as a chemical breaks down in the body. They are evidence that someone was exposed to a chemical.
"We have very, very high reports by the mother of behaviors consistent with pervasive developmental disorder," said Eskenazi at a recent neurotoxicology conference. "These include signs like the child is afraid to try new things, can't stand anything out of place, and avoid looking others in the eye. This is considered to be autism spectrum behavior."
Kaplan, S. (2010). Salinas, California: The Salad Bowl of Pesticides. Retrieved from: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/12/21/salinas-california-the-salad-bowl-of-pesticides/
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