Pesticide exposure in the womb increases chances of developing autism

Tuesday, June 28, 2016 by: PF Louis
Tags: pesticide exposure, autism, developmental delay

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(NaturalNews) A University of California, Davis, (UC Davis) study recently made a strong epidemiological association between pesticide exposures during pregnancy and autistic or developmentally delayed children.

It was conducted among several farmland locations in California, the top agriculture-producing state in the nation. Their efforts confirmed earlier studies on mothers' pesticide exposure or intake and adverse effects to the fetus.

There were two important conditions that made this study more accessible for graduate student and lead study author Janie Shelton and her research team:

(1) California requires reports of all commercial pesticide applications, including where, when, which one, or ones, and how much was applied. This has led to a state-monitored map that graphically illustrates the collected information on the approximately 200 million pounds of pesticides applied annually in California.

(2) There's a cohort pool of participants in CHARGE (Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and Environment) study. The participants consist of families with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developmentally delayed (DD) children aged two to five.

It seems ironic that CHARGE was purportedly arranged to investigate both environmental and genetic factors as potential causes for ASD and DD. Those are two camps that are diametrically opposed.

Apparently, the genetic cause research camp was set up and funded a couple of years ago with the intention of proving that all autism is genetically predisposed.

Somehow, in one or two generations, the genetics of many simply warped somehow to produce mentally defective, physically suffering children. Genetic research for ASD is a ruse to distract culpability away from vaccine and pesticide industries.

But most of us agree that our toxic environment and toxic injections called vaccinations have at least something to do with our ASD epidemic, with 1 in 68 now affected, up 30 percent from just two years ago, 2012. That's a CDC count that some have adjusted to 1 in 50. Apparently, the human gene pool deteriorated 30 percent more in two years.

The other convenient distraction posited is that autism is diagnosed better now than before. Maybe so. But in 1950, the rate of ASD was 1 out of 10,000 cases, according to Dr. Darold Treffert, and in 1966, Dr. Victor Lotter found the rate to be 4.1 per 10,000 children.

That's quite an advance in medical diagnostic procedures according to the "it's recognized more now" theory.

There may never be a well funded independent vaccine-ASD study that's accurately reported by the mainstream media, for reasons obvious to most Natural News readers.

This UC Davis study stuck with linking pesticides, which have, like vaccinations, increased exponentially and concomitantly with the rise in autism spectrum disorder and developmental delay rates.

How this UC Davis study was performed

The researchers acquired copies of the commercial pesticide maps from the California EPA's Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR), then sent out questionnaires to the 1,000 participating families in the CHARGE cohort of ASD and DD children aged two to five, most of whom live in California's central areas.

The questionnaires asked CHARGE mothers exactly where they lived during preconception, pregnancy stages and delivery. The information obtained was compared to the California DPR maps.

It was discovered that one-third of them had lived less than a mile from large farms undergoing heavy pesticide applications, while some of them had lived just a little farther away from pesticide sites.

Due to DPR records, the UC Davis team could determine what pesticides were used, how much and when, at the locations reported by the surveys within the three main pesticide groups of organophosphates, pyrethroids and carbamates.

Organophosphates were associated with the most severe cases of ASD; pyrethroids appeared to be linked to ASD immediately before conception and during the third trimester, while carbamates were associated more with DD (developmental delay).

All of these pesticide groups contain several toxic chemical compounds that focus on nervous systems the way household insecticides do, which should not be in your homes either.

Of course, one must consider that consuming heavily sprayed produce can also bring these neurotoxins into the womb and impair the fetus's brain and nervous system development as well.

High levels of pesticides and herbicides have also been found in the cord blood of city-dwelling mothers whose foods are purchased from major stores.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.cnn.com

http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu

http://www.thinktwice.com

http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov

http://www.natureworldnews.com

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

http://science.naturalnews.com