It is well established that children are more vulnerable than adults to environmental insults such as pesticides from conception onward. Children living in agricultural areas are exposed differently from those in urban areas.
A study of rural children by researchers at Mexico’s Universidad Atónoma de Nayarit compared two communities located less than a quarter of a mile from agricultural fields with one control community located more than a mile away.
The study shows that children in the field-adjacent towns are clearly exposed to pesticides and are experiencing cellular distress as a result. The state of Nayarit is on the west coast of Mexico near Mazatlan.
Rural children encounter aerial application, spray drift, and erosion. If their parents are agricultural workers and especially if they apply pesticides, they bring home residues on their clothes.
Residential storage of pesticides and small children’s propensity to play in the dirt and put things in their mouths exacerbate their exposure. Urban children get hit by pesticides in their homes, schools and parks.
The researchers took blood and urine samples from 431 children ages 6-12 and collected questionnaires as to pesticide exposures from the parents or guardians. They assayed the samples for biomarkers known to be linked to various cellular stressors, principally oxidative stress triggered by reactive oxygen species.
A very common result is inflammation, which contributes in multiple ways to chronic and acute diseases in numerous neurological, digestive tract, cardiovascular and other systems.
The biomarkers included five indicators of oxidative stress: lipid peroxidation via malondialdehyde, a chemical that causes cell membrane permeability and forms compounds called adducts with DNA, which can trigger gene mutations; 8-OHdG, an oxidative stress agent that also forms adducts with DNA that precondition genes for mutation; the immune system messengers called cytokines, which are a sign of inflammation; and six dialkyl phosphates, which are a family of pesticide metabolites.
The researchers found that the dialkyl phosphates, the malondialdehyde and the 8-OHdG concentrations were significantly higher in children from the field-adjacent towns compared to the more distant ones.
One cytokine (a type of interleukin) was elevated in one of the two nearer towns. One dialkyl phosphate, DETP, was the most commonly found pesticide metabolite. According to a 2021 Thai study, DETP is a marker of exposure to numerous pesticides.
Nayarit grows tobacco, sorghum, corn, beans, sugar cane and mango, and numerous harmful pesticides are used in abundance. These include diazinon (banned in the U.S.), chlorpyrifos and permethrin on beans, carbofuran and acetochlor on sugar cane, and carbaryl, malathion and even the Stockholm Convention-banned endosulfan on mangoes.
Neonicotinoids are increasingly used on sorghum, corn and mangoes, while atrazine is common on corn and sugar cane.
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The study did not connect these results with specific pesticides or provide any epidemiological evidence of health effects in the children. Further, it provided only a snapshot in time rather than a series of samples that could offer a more precise picture of chronic exposures.
Tobacco is a particularly concerning crop. Eighty percent of Mexico’s tobacco is produced in Nayarit. The 2006 study conducted on children as young as five years old who work in tobacco fields and sheds, where families also sleep, found the children’s acetylcholine levels significantly depressed.
This is a familiar outcome of organophosphate and carbamate exposures and interference with acetylcholine is known to be neurologically toxic. Tobacco is especially risky, the authors noted, because its leaves exude nicotine resin, which can hold the equivalent of 30 applications of chemicals and is easily absorbed through the skin.
Children in agricultural areas are not the only children exposed to pesticides. There is ample evidence of urban children’s exposure as well. The main difference may be the chemical types.
A 2023 study of low-income urban and rural Latino children in North Carolina found that the urban children were mostly exposed to organochlorines, which are no longer widely used but are very persistent, whereas the rural children were exposed to organophosphates and pyrethroids, which are still used in agriculture.
Unexpectedly, there was some suggestion in their results, although not conclusive, that the organochlorine exposures resulted in more cognitive impairment than the organophosphates, which would imply that urban children being exposed to persistent pesticides may be at higher risk for neurological damage than rural children exposed to currently-used pesticides.
Thus, health advocates say there is little comfort to be gained from assuming that only some children suffer the health consequences of exposure. Most children are exposed. There is likewise cold comfort in assuming that banned pesticides are no longer damaging people and ecosystems.
The Nayarit studies provide a window into the plight of some of the world’s poorest children, whose labor is being exploited and whose futures are mortgaged to pesticides. Nor are pregnant women and fetuses safe from the effects. Organochlorines, organophosphates, neonicotinoids and pyrethroids have all been shown to adversely affect fetuses.
Beyond Pesticides’ Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database is a rich source of information on hundreds of pesticides and their health effects, including those on the most vulnerable among us.
See also our Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture page for ways to reduce exposure to children and adults.
The current political situation puts environmental and public health protection for children and adults in the crosshairs. On Feb. 25, new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin announced that he intends to fire 65% of EPA employees, eliminating nearly 10,000 jobs, according to The New York Times.
In January, President Donald Trump appointed Nancy Beck, a veteran of the EPA during his first administration, to head the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.
Beck is also a veteran executive of the industry influence group the American Chemistry Council. While Beyond Pesticides has certainly been critical of EPA decisions for decades, a world with even an inefficient EPA in it is preferable to one crippled by anti-scientific ideologues.
To prevent this, make your voice heard. In recent weeks, citizens have raised objections en masse to staff firings and program cancellations across the executive branch.
Members of Congress can be prodded into action by constituents. Call or write your elected officials at all levels of government and let them know that you demand a functioning EPA and policies supporting human and ecosystem health and that eliminating pesticides is the policy our country needs to pursue.
See USA.gov to get contact information for federal elected officials. Also, do not lose sight of local, state and regional efforts to reverse the tide of pesticide harms. Our U.S. Pesticide Reform Policy map shows numerous locations in the U.S. where positive steps have been taken.
For example, the city of Spokane, Washington, banned the use of neonicotinoids on city properties in 2014. The sound and fury at the national level need not extinguish citizen action.
Originally published by Beyond Pesticides.
