Re: According to CNN – Study: ADHD Linked to Pesticide Exposure

[Tim]

I did a lot of work a while back, trying to get a local pesticide bylaw. Being a chemist by training was very helpful in this and something that I concluded was that although some pesticides such as the organophosphate insecticides were clearly a problem because of their nature — they are poisons — other pesticides such as some of the common herbicides weren’t so obviously a direct problem for human health. The difference is that insects and other members of the animal kingdom share a lot of biochemistry with us while plants share less.

However, I also became aware of how many chemicals we are all exposed to that are man made and quite recent — post war mostly. While absolutely pure 2,4-D may not be harmful to any thing but your weeds, the commercial product contains impurities that are not tested along with other chemicals, each with their own impurities, that make it possible to spray the stuff and make it more effective. If you looked hard enough you could find hundreds of chemicals in the mixture and few have received any scrutiny. And, even if we screen out the obvious poisons, what about the long term effects of the others that we can only guess at? Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie document the issue in their book. Here is the web site: http://slowdeathbyrubberduck.com. I think this is a huge problem and one very hard to study because no one is unexposed so a true control group for a study is impossible to find.

So, what about ADHD? There is a clear link with cigarette smoking during pregnancy, which is a chemical exposure for the foetus. As for the chemical soup we live in? We may never know for certain.

Let me throw out something for thought. ADHD is clearly a disability in our culture but there is some evidence that it may have some evolutionary advantage in our previous hunter gatherer life. I don’t know if I would want to hang my hat on the idea but this web site http://borntoexplore.org/hunter.htm is an interesting read.

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