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Health / Lifestyle News India:
Health News India > 'Pesticides affect neuro
development in children'
Chennai, Apr 8 (IANS)
:
The wide use of pesticides in India's farm
sector had led to children developing mental development
disorders, the green watchdog body Greenpeace India has
found in a nation-wide study.
This was
particularly true of children working in the farms. The
alarming findings have led experts to call for a halt on
pesticide use in farms, a sector that employs large
number of children as labour.
According to
Greenpeace, the children studied by the organisation
showed that the children had developed serious mental
development disorders like poor motor skills and poor
analytical skills.
Their cognitive-perceptive
skills, too, were low and they had poor concentration
and learning ability. Their memory was also
impaired.
In the study, 898 children in six
districts in six states of the country participated in
control and test groups. They were divided into two age
groups -- four to five and nine to 13.
The study
showed that in 86 percent of the cases, in the younger
children's group, those exposed to pesticides performed
worse in skill tests than those not exposed.
In
the older group, 85 percent of children exposed to
pesticides showed poorer skills than unexposed
groups.
Areas under cotton cultivation were
studied as 55 percent of the pesticides used in India
were in cotton farms, said a Greeenpeace
official.
"This is the first time that such a
country-wide study has been done to pin
responsibility for environmental and economic damage
on large-scale pesticide use in India's farm sector,"
said Greenpeace India Executive Director G.
Ananthapadmanabhan.
Large-scale use of chemical
pesticides had dramatically altered the neuro-motor
profile of the exposed children, the report says. Rapid
assessment tools like ability to catch a ball, assemble
a puzzle and balancing tests were used.
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