ARE ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS DAMAGING BABIES' BRAINS?

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders--any of a number of brain-related problems such as attention deficit, hyperactivity or autism--increased by 17 percent between 1997 and 2008. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) rose by 33 percent, while autism exploded by an astonishing 289 percent during that period.

Most strikingly, autism has continued to rise. In 2008, about one US child out of 125 was diagnosed on the autistic spectrum, while by 2018, it was one out of 59, including one out of every 42 boys.

There's still debate about whether these dramatic increases are real, or are caused by increased awareness, more access to care or changing diagnostic criteria. Those may all be factors, but it seems unlikely that they can explain a tripling in the documented incidence of autism in such as short time.

A small but growing body of research suggests that the risk of autism or other neuro-developmental disorders is increased by exposure to pesticides or other persistent organic pollutants (POPs), which may disrupt crucial steps in brain development. We all carry numerous POPS in our bodies, and they have been shown to cause a wide range of metabolic abnormalities. Given the complexity and delicacy of fetal development, and especially the development of the brain, it would not be surprising to find that these ubiquitous pollutants are at least part of the story.

Some recent research with tadpoles may shed light on this question. Although humans and frogs may seem very distantly related, both are vertebrates (animals with backbones) and share many developmental steps and basic brain features. 

Sara McClelland, a biologist at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and her colleagues studied the impact of very low doses--1 millionth of a gram per liter of water--of the commonly-used pesticide chlorpyrifos on the brains and bodies of the tadpoles of northern leopard frogs. 

As they reported in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, exposure to chlorpyrifos caused significant changes to the tadpoles' brains. Three brain areas were impacted, areas important to vision, hearing, breathing and motor control. Those changes turned out to be independent of the pesticide's effect on the tiny animals the tadpole's feed on.

 "Innocuous" pesticide dose directly impacts vertebrate brain development

Credit: McClelland et al., Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry

"This study demonstrates that exposure to very low, presumably innocuous levels of organophosphorous pesticides can alter neurodevelopment in amphibians," says McClellnd. "Due to developmental similarities in vertebrates, this work may have implications for how exposure to low doses of organophosphorous pesticides could affect human neurodevelopment."

Given that chlorpyrifos is just one of dozens or hundreds of toxins that we are exposed to, more research on their human impacts is urgently needed. As epidemiologist Miguel Porta points out, "Whatever we know, whatever we think we know about the adverse health effects of a given chemical compound, and about the adverse health effects of several different compounds, simply think that it will not be uncommon for them to be--each and all--present at high concentrations in a significant minority of your patients, constituency, citizens, family or friends. And then think about the plausible negative health effects of the combination or 'cocktail' at high and low concentrations."

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You can find a link to the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry study here.

And a recent study linking a "cocktail" of pollutants to impaired fetal growth at this URL.

And click here for another recent study on the impact of toxic cocktails on brain development.

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TRUMP AND PRUITT'S EPA GUTS RESEARCH ON TOXIC CHEMICALS AND KIDS

I maintain a computer file with hundreds of scientific articles about the effects of toxic substances on children.

Arsenic and lead in drinking water. Pesticides and other Persistent Organic Pollutants in the air we breathe, clothing, furniture, building materials, you name it. Some common drugs taken during pregnancy. Hormones and endocrine disrupting chemicals in food, plastics, toys, just about anything that could go into a child's mouth. Chemicals used in fracking that get into the air and water. Fire retardants, fungicides, and many other classes of chemicals. Not to mention the impact of the cocktail of these chemicals that many people carry in their bodies, in breast milk, in their blood.

 Credit: DES Daughter

These articles detail the impacts of these toxins on developing children still in the womb, on infants, children, teenagers (and adults too). Autism, attention deficits, abnormal brain activity, birth defects, impaired sleep, impaired learning, reduced IQ, disruptions in the reproductive system, infertility, obesity, cancer, breathing problems, kidney and liver damage--all of these and many more impairments and diseases have been linked to various chemicals that find their way into our children's bodies.

Like research on smoking decades ago and on climate change now, much of this research is controversial or marginalized. The suspect chemicals have important uses in agriculture, energy production, medicine, and many other activities, and add billions of dollars to the economy and to the bottom lines of giant corporations. The companies that manufacture and sell these substances are strongly motivated to keep selling them, and are willing to spend huge sums to question, hide or suppress research that threatens their bottom line, carry out or fund research aimed at sowing doubt about such threatening findings; and in many cases demean or threaten researchers who are brave enough to research these links.

Still, this body of research has been used by governments around the world, and by the US, to develop legislation to ban some of the most deadly chemicals, reduce and control the use of many others, and protect the health of children and adults.

In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been one of the major sources of funding for research on the impacts of known or potential toxins, through its National Center for Environmental Research (NCER). The NCER funded millions of dollars of research on the risks to children from potentially dangerous substances. Until now, that is.

Trump's appointee to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, has decided to kill the NCER, as announced on February 26, 2018. The gutting of the program is couched as an efficiency measure, but is in line with Trump and Pruitt's goals of reducing regulations and risks for corporations, unfortunately at the expense of America's children.

In 1965, comedian Tom Lehrer satirized the extent of pollution that Americans were then being exposed to in the song "Pollution" on his album That Was the Year That Was. The song opens with:

If you visit American cith
You will find it very pretty
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breath the air!

The EPA was created five years later, in December of 1970. Over the years, it did a lot to clean up America's polluted rivers, lakes, industrial sites, cities and skies. However, under Trump and Pruitt, we seem to be turning back the clock to those bad old days, when, as Lehrer concluded:

So go to the city, see the crazy people there
Like lambs to the slaughter
They're drinking the water
And breathing the air

WARNING CONCERNING ACETAMINOPHEN IN PREGNANCY

Acetaminophen is one of the most widely used headache and pain relievers in the world. It's sold alone under brand names such as Tylenol and Paracetamol, or in combination with other ingredients  as Exedrin, Dristan and many others.

Credit: iStock

Acetaminophen is officially authorized for use during pregnancy. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 65 percent of American women use the medication at some point in their pregnancy.

However, several new studies raise red flags for pregnant women and their children.

A new study from Mt. Sinai Health System, in New York City concludes that pregnant women should limit their use of acetaminophen in any of its forms. The study found that expectant mothers' use of acetaminophen in early pregnancy (8-13 weeks) was associated with delayed language development in their daughters when tested at the age of 30 months.

Delayed language development is important in its own right, and because it tends to predict a range of neurodevelopmental problems in children.

""Given the prevalence of prenatal acetaminophen use and the importance of language development, our findings, if replicated, suggest that pregnant women should limit their use of this analgesic during pregnancy," said Shanna Swan, PhD, Professor of Environmental and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the study's senior author.

Acetaminophen is found in many over-the-counter medications

Credit: Dome Poon

An international team of researchers followed 754 women who were part of the Swedish Environmental Longitudinal, Mother and Child, Asthma and Allergy study. Both the number of acetaminophen tablets taken early in pregnancy and measured concentration of the drug in the mothers' urine were strongly correlated with girl's later language development.

The effect was striking--girls whose mothers took acetaminophen more than six times in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy were six times more likely to show delayed development of language than girls whose mothers had not taken any of the drug, and the daughters of the 25 percent of mothers with the highest urine levels of the drug were 10 times more likely than those in the lowest 25 percent.

This is the first study to show this effect. As professor Swan points out, further research is needed to corroborate or modify the findings. Still, given the importance of language development in childhood, women who are or may be pregnant should certainly take notice.

In addition, three separate studies, just released, found that a mother's exposure to acetaminophen during pregnancy may reduce the number of eggs tucked away in their daughters' ovaries, and so reduce their eventual fertility. Although these studies were in mice rather than humans, researchers view it as significant for humans as well. "Although this may not be a severe impairment to fertility," says Dr. David Kristensen, at Copenhagen University Hospital, in Denmark, "it is still of real concern since data from three different labs all independently found that paracetamol may disrupt female reproductive development in this way, which indicates further investigation is needed to establish how this affects human fertility."

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The Swedish/Mt. Sinai study appears in the journal European Psychiatry, 10 January, 2018

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