Thursday, April 30, 2009

Do Pesticides Increase Birth Defects

New research shows that babies conceived in the spring and early summer have a higher risk for a wide range of birth defects, including Down syndrome, cleft palate, and spina bifida.

The reported increase in birth defects was modest, but it coincided with a similar spike in groundwater pesticide levels during the spring-early summer planting season.

These findings suggest that pesticide exposure may influence birth outcomes nationwide, researchers say.

“There appears to be a season of conception in which the risk of having a child with a birth defect is higher,” Indiana University School of Medicine neonatology professor Paul D. Winchester, MD, tells WebMD.

“This study does not prove that pesticides cause birth defects, but we set out to show that they did not and we were not reassured.”

In earlier studies, researchers have reported increases in birth defects, pregnancy complications, and miscarriages in babies born to farm workers with high levels of exposure to agricultural pesticides.

But the study is one of the first to suggest that indirect exposure to agricultural chemical may influence birth outcomes.

Winchester and colleagues compared data on pesticide levels in surface water between 1996 and 2002 to data on birth defects at the national level during the same period.

The researchers used the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA), which includes samples from 186 streams across the United States, representing 50% of the drinking water consumed in the country.

Statistics on birth defects were reported to the CDC by individual states.

The NAWQA analysis confirmed that concentrations of widely used pesticides in ground water were highest in the months of April through July during the period examined. Read the entire article.

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