Exposure to Pesticides In Childhood Linked to Cancer

“We don’t know ‘how much’ exposure it takes, or if there’s a critical window in development,” Chensheng (Alex) Lu, senior author and associate professor of environmental exposure biology at Harvard Chan School, said September 14, 2015 in U.S. News & World Report. “Is the window during pregnancy? Or even before pregnancy? That will take a much deeper investigation,” he said.

Lead author Mei Chen, research associate in the Department of Environmental Health, Lu, and colleagues examined 16 studies in the scientific literature for a possible association between residential pesticide exposures during childhood and childhood cancers. The children exposed to indoor insecticides were at a higher risk of childhood cancers, including leukemia, acute leukemia, and lymphoma, but not childhood brain tumors. The risk increased with the frequency of insecticide use, the authors found. They did not find a cancer link to outdoor insecticides.

While more research needs to be done on the findings, Lu thinks it’s wise to limit babies’ and children’s exposure to pesticides, especially the ones used indoors that were linked to leukemia and lymphoma, according to the story.