Prenatal exposure to Chlorpyrifos in the womb disrupts brain development. Risks remain for children in farming communities.
A recent study has identified a connection between prenatal exposure to the commonly used insecticide chlorpyrifos (CPF) and structural changes in the brain, along with reduced motor abilities, in children and adolescents living in New York City.
This research is the first to show that exposure before birth can lead to long-lasting and widespread molecular, cellular, and metabolic alterations in the brain, in addition to impairments in fine motor coordination. The study, conducted by scientists at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and the Keck School of Medicine of USC, appears in the journal JAMA Neurology.
Birth cohort study results
The analysis focused on 270 children and adolescents enrolled in the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health birth cohort study, all of whom were born to Latino and African-American mothers. Chlorpyrifos levels were detected in their umbilical cord blood, and they later underwent brain imaging and behavioral evaluations between the ages of 6 and 14.
The findings revealed that higher prenatal exposure was consistently linked to more pronounced disruptions in brain structure, function, and metabolism, as well as slower motor speed and impaired motor programming. Evidence across multiple neuroimaging methods indicated that the severity of abnormalities increased directly with the level of CPF exposure, suggesting a clear dose-response effect.
Residential pesticide use was the main source of exposure for these children. Although the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prohibited CPF for indoor household use in 2001, it continues to be applied in agriculture for non-organic crops such as fruits, vegetables, and grains. This ongoing use results in toxic exposure from outdoor air and dust, particularly near farming areas.
Expert warnings on vulnerable groups
“Current widespread exposures, at levels comparable to those experienced in this sample, continue to place farm workers, pregnant women, and unborn children in harm’s way. It is vitally important that we continue to monitor the levels of exposure in potentially vulnerable populations, especially in pregnant women in agricultural communities, as their infants continue to be at risk,” said Virginia Rauh, ScD, senior author on the study and the Jane and Alan Batkin Professor of Population and Family Health at Columbia Mailman School.
“The disturbances in brain tissue and metabolism that we observed with prenatal exposure to this one pesticide were remarkably widespread throughout the brain. Other organophosphate pesticides likely produce similar effects, warranting caution to minimize exposures in pregnancy, infancy, and early childhood, when brain development is rapid and especially vulnerable to these toxic chemicals,” says first author Bradley Peterson, MD, Vice Chair for Research and Chief of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
Reference: “Brain Abnormalities in Children Exposed Prenatally to the Pesticide Chlorpyrifos” by Bradley S. Peterson, Sahar Delavari, Ravi Bansal, Siddhant Sawardekar, Chaitanya Gupte, Howard Andrews, Lori A. Hoepner, Wanda Garcia, Frederica Perera and Virginia Rauh, 18 August 2025, JAMA Neurology.
DOI: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2025.2818
This study was supported by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (grants ES09600, ES015905, ES015579, DA027100, ES08977, ES009089); U.S. Environmental Protection Agency STAR (grants RD834509, RD832141, R827027); National Institute of Mental Health (grants MH068318, K02-74677); and the John and Wendy Neu Family Foundation. The study was also supported by an anonymous donor, Patrice and Mike Harmon, the Inspirit Fund, and the Robert Coury family.
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11 Comments
Don’t worry, it’ll soon be replaced with some other chemical with a new name, not yet proven to be just as toxic.
Testing only two ethnicities creates bias. This seems like a highly questionable study. It can’t be trusted even if their is a slight grain of truth to it the supposed research does seem problematic in the long run. When you test without targeting particular ethnicities you create not only a stronger representation to your claims but you rule out other factors such as political influence and more.
The facial that those two populations were studied in part because they had been born and lived in the areas described as being adjacent to regular applications of pesticides – it doesn’t necessarily dignity hst similar results wouldn’t occur in & similarly affect other children in the same way. And some parents might not grant their children to be included in the study.
There is enough built-in bias in society without jumping to inclusions every time – but we need to remember how much previous testing was performed on, and thought applicsble to only white men or only white women. Minorities have been excluded far more thsn those of us who are “white.” That may have had an egregious lack of improvement on the rates of both maternal & infant mortality in those groups – and also in Mississippi’s current crisis / emergency as infant deaths reach a terrible high, are something I hope that we can learn from and improve on.
Tried to correct “facial” back to back to “fact”, but should have turned off autocomplete/correct – not even a minute to return to correct?!
Yes, we should expose pregnant women of other ethnicities to dangerous chemicals in order to remove any potential biases from this unscientific study, after all, they are not as human as the tested subjects!!!
Right?
Please think about your responses because this is the logic I derive from it.
Sometimes inturpulation is ethically more important than scientific accuracy.
It hasn’t been available in many years
Wait, it’s not a good idea to poison your food?!?
They lived near where pesticides were applied to commercial crops! That’s the takeaway – not the victims’ fault when their neighborhood is affected by someone else’s decisions.
The article first states the study found these changes among children living in NYC, then that children living in farming communities are at risk. One of my favorite things to visit in NYC is all the farmland.
Chlorpyrifos and other insecticides are nasty poisons, of course any exposure to them are going to cause bad health issues, same outcomes if vulnerable people were exposed to the same amounts of Alcohol and Nicotine !!
It shows the height of stupidity of the writers and the readers , these toxic chemicals that kill grasshoppers on contact are not multivitamins, so WHY DO YOU NEED A STUDY TO SHOW THEY ARE HARMFUL? these are self evident truths, crawl out of your pseuointellectuality, use common sense.