Exposure to a common pesticide during pregnancy can impair children's brain development and motor function for years to come, a new study says.
The widely used pesticide chlorpyrifos is linked to altered brain function and poorer fine motor control among children exposed to it while in the womb, researchers report in JAMA Neurology.
"The disturbances in brain tissue and metabolism that we observed with prenatal exposure to this one pesticide were remarkably widespread throughout the brain," lead researcher Dr. Bradley Peterson said in a news release. He's chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine.
For the study, researchers conducted behavioral assessments and MRI scans of 270 kids in upper Manhattan whose mothers had been exposed to CPF during pregnancy when their apartments were fumigated.
Related
