HEALTH: Organic Diets Keep Kids Pesticide Free

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HEALTH: Organic Diets Keep Kids Pesticide Free

 

By CHRISTINE DELL'AMORE, UPI Consumer Health Correspondent, 22 Feb 06

 

Children who switched their diets for only a few days to organic foods

dramatically and immediately lowered the amount of toxic pesticides in their

bodies, researchers report.

Lead author Chensheng Lu of Emory University found that when kids eat organic

foods, pesticides in their body plummet to undetectable levels -- even when

following the diet for only five days.

" An organic diet does provide protective measures for pesticide exposure in

kids, " said Lu, who presented his research at a panel at the American

Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in St. Louis. His study

appeared in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Lu designed a novel intervention study by substituting organic foods into the

diets of 23 elementary school children in the Seattle area. All the kids, who

were aged 3 to 11, had metabolites -- or evidence of pesticides -- in their

urine at the study's start. But as soon as they began eating organic foods, the

concentration of metabolites dropped to essentially

zero. Once they returned to their conventional diet, the pesticides levels

bounced back up.

Lu said he is confident that the pesticide reductions can be attributed to the

kids' diet, because the particular class of pesticides studied, called

organophosphorus pesticides, or OPs, are not found in households. The kids

ingested these pesticides from eating conventional foods, and not from playing

in grass treated with chemicals, for example.

Lu and Fenske claim the health risks to children are still uncertain, although

Lu points out that there's no getting around the fact a pesticide is a

neurotoxin. Since the chemicals disrupt enzymes in the brain which govern

communication, exposure to pesticides could damage a child's brain. These

chemicals are developed, after all, to kill bugs by paralyzing or over-exciting

their neurological systems.

" In terms of the impact of these low levels of chemicals on a regular basis in a

developing organism -- and that's what a child's neurological system is -- this

is extremely important that we try to understand this, " Fenske said.

The Environmental Protection Agency warns children may be sensitive to

pesticides because their excretory systems are not developed enough to excrete

pesticides, and that in relation to their body weight, kids eat and drink more

than adults.

Currently, researchers are studying whether conditions like attention deficit

disorder, lowered IQs, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease can be linked

to early exposure to pesticides. Children are most vulnerable to pesticides from

formation of the fetus up to 2 years of age.

Charles Benbrook, the chief scientist of The Organic Center, a Rhode

Island-based nonprofit encouraging the widespread adoption of organic foods and

processes, says there's enough consensus to act now to rid agriculture of

pesticides. He mentioned the work of Robin Whyatt at Columbia University with

pregnant women in New York. Whyatt found that birth weight and birth length is

lower in children whose mothers were exposed to pesticides.

Benbrook said he was amazed at how fast and how significantly the urinary

metabolites fell in Lu's study participants.

 

Full article at http://washtimes.com/upi/20060222-044543-1356r.htm

 

 

Caroline Collard

 

World's first fully certified organic skin, body, oral and health care products

www.happyandhealthy.org.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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