Potential Autism Risk Identified
A new study shows that pregnant women who use flea and tick shampoos on pets may double the risk of autism in their children.
This finding comes from the Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment study (CHARGE) – a case-control study from the University of California Davis. The ongoing research follows 2,000 children – some with autism, some with developmental delay, and some with typical development – and compares individual genetic patterns with exposure to medications, chemicals, food products, and other environmental factors.
The authors (who stress the findings are preliminary) believe that insecticide chemicals called pyrethrins may play a role in triggering autism in certain kids.
Pyrethrins are extracted from Chrysanthemum flowers and are regarded as low in toxicity. In fact, the USDA considers pyrethrum formulas to be safe to use in food preparation areas. Pyrethrins are widely used in insect foggers (to kill flies, mosquitoes, and cockroaches) and are also found in some lice-control shampoos for humans.
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Anonymous
There's little doubt that the environment plays the defining role in autism, and this could very well be one of those roles. Pesticides have long been implicated in autism. For those of you not in the know, Thimerosal (the mercury containing additive in vaccine preservatives was developed in the 1930's just prior to the first cases of autism were diagnosed by Dr. Leo Kanner) what many people don't know is that this was the precise time that pesticides were beginning to be sprayed on farm fields here in America...and the kids diagnosed first were all rural kids that lived adjacent to farm fields!
Think of the explosion in autism recently and then think of the BT crops that have been introduced into our food supply in the last 1 - 2 decades! The pesticides are now being genetically modified to be a part of every single cell of the plants that we eat and use for livestock, there's simply no more "washing off" the pesticides...there's no way not to injest something that is at the cellular level.
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