Pesticides and inner-city children: Exposures, risks, and prevention

Six million children live in poverty in America's inner cities. These child ren 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, a nd other vermin. The organophosphate insecticide chlorpyrifos and certain p yrethroids are the registered pesticides most heavily applied in cities. il legal street pesticides are also in use, including tres pasitos (a carbamat e), tiza china, and methyl parathion. In New York State in 1997, the heavie st use of pesticides in all counties statewide was in the urban boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Children are highly vulnerable to pesticides. Beca use of their play close to the ground, their hand-to-mouth behavior, and th eir unique dietary patterns, children absorb more pesticides from their env ironment than adults. The long persistence of semivolatile pesticides such as chlorpyrifos on rugs, furniture, stuffed toys, and other absorbent surfa ces within closed apartments further enhances urban children's exposures. C ompounding these risks of heavy exposures are children's decreased ability to detoxify and excrete pesticides and the rapid growth, development, and d ifferentiation of their vital organ systems. These developmental immaturiti es create early windows of great vulnerability. Recent experimental data su ggest, 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 pyr ethroids exert hormonal activity that may alter early neurologic and reprod uctive development. Assays currently used for assessment of the toxicity of pesticides are insensitive and cannot accurately predict effects to childr en exposed in utero or in early postnatal life. Protection of American chil dren, and particularly of inner-city children, against the developmental ha zards of pesticides requires a comprehensive strategy that monitors pattern s of pesticide use on a continuing basis, assesses children's actual exposu res to pesticides, uses state-of-the-art developmental toxicity testing, an d establishes societal targets for reduction of pesticide use. Key words: c hildren's environmental health, chlorpyrifos, environmental justice, neurod evelopmental impairment, organophosphates, pesticides, pyrethroids.