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Pesticides and inner-city children: exposures, risks, and prevention
P J Landrigan1, L Claudio, S B Markowitz
1Department of Community and Preventive Medicine and Center for Children's Health and the Environment, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY 10029, USA. plandrigan@smtplink.mssm.edu
Insights
Inner-city children face high pesticide exposure risks due to their environment and developmental vulnerabilities. Comprehensive strategies are needed to monitor pesticide use and protect children from developmental hazards.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Health
- Pediatric Toxicology
- Urban Public Health
Background:
- Inner-city children are disproportionately exposed to pesticides, including organophosphates like chlorpyrifos and pyrethroids, used in urban environments.
- Children's behaviors (e.g., crawling, hand-to-mouth activity) and physiological immaturities increase their absorption and susceptibility to pesticide toxicity.
- Pesticides persist on indoor surfaces, prolonging exposure for children in urban dwellings.
Observation:
- Pesticide use is heavily concentrated in urban areas like Manhattan and Brooklyn.
- Children's developing organ systems are particularly vulnerable to the neurotoxic and hormonal effects of pesticides.
- Current toxicity assessments are insufficient to predict adverse developmental outcomes in children.
Findings:
- Experimental data suggest chlorpyrifos may act as a developmental neurotoxicant, impacting fetal neuron development.
- Pyrethroids can exhibit hormonal activity, potentially disrupting neurologic and reproductive development.
- Children's limited capacity to detoxify pesticides exacerbates exposure risks.
Implications:
- Urgent need for comprehensive strategies to monitor urban pesticide use and assess children's exposure levels.
- Developmental toxicity testing must be advanced to accurately assess risks to children in utero and early life.
- Societal targets for reducing pesticide use are crucial for protecting vulnerable urban children from developmental hazards.
Abstract:
Six million children live in poverty in America's inner cities. These children are at high risk of exposure to pesticides that are used extensively in urban schools, homes, and day-care centers for control of roaches, rats, and other vermin. The organophosphate insecticide chlorpyrifos and certain pyrethroids are the registered pesticides most heavily applied in cities. Illegal street pesticides are also in use, including tres pasitos (a carbamate), tiza china, and methyl parathion. In New York State in 1997, the heaviest use of pesticides in all counties statewide was in the urban boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Children are highly vulnerable to pesticides. Because of their play close to the ground, their hand-to-mouth behavior, and their unique dietary patterns, children absorb more pesticides from their environment than adults. The long persistence of semivolatile pesticides such as chlorpyrifos on rugs, furniture, stuffed toys, and other absorbent surfaces within closed apartments further enhances urban children's exposures. Compounding these risks of heavy exposures are children's decreased ability to detoxify and excrete pesticides and the rapid growth, development, and differentiation of their vital organ systems. These developmental immaturities create early windows of great vulnerability. Recent experimental data suggest, for example, that chlorpyrifos may be a developmental neurotoxicant and that exposure in utero may cause biochemical and functional aberrations in fetal neurons as well as deficits in the number of neurons. Certain pyrethroids exert hormonal activity that may alter early neurologic and reproductive development. Assays currently used for assessment of the toxicity of pesticides are insensitive and cannot accurately predict effects to children exposed in utero or in early postnatal life. Protection of American children, and particularly of inner-city children, against the developmental hazards of pesticides requires a comprehensive strategy that monitors patterns of pesticide use on a continuing basis, assesses children's actual exposures to pesticides, uses state-of-the-art developmental toxicity testing, and establishes societal targets for reduction of pesticide use.