Toxic substances affect neurodevelopment

"We must protect the brains of the future." Thus ended yesterday the conference Dr. Philippe Grandjean 'Toxicity and child development’ that gave in the Cosmocaixa under the INMA Conference 2011. So he warned the audience about the many pollutants that affect child development, especially the brain, at all stages, since it is a fetus until puberty.

Dr. Grandjean, adjunct professor of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston (Massachusetts), and Professor of Environmental Medicine University of Southern Denmark in Odense (Denmark) said that in recent years research has showed a predisposition to serious diseases that can develop in the early stages of life. In this regard, more than 200 industrial chemicals that produce toxicity in the human brain and half of them are produced industrially in large quantities.

According to Dr. Grandjean, toxicity given during childhood affects directly to neurodevelopment and this toxicity penetrates in all our life area: air, water and food, to be present within us. In fact, Grandjean said that "although we still do not confirm the neurotoxicity remains in our body," his opinion is that it is "permanent, not reversible."

This contact is especially critical at the time that the brain is developing, that is, during childhood and adolescence. An example of this effect is estimated that prenatal exposure to methylmercury than twice the recommended limit, reduced by 1.5 points IQ adult.

Recent studies have focused on measuring the toxicity received at 7, 14 and 20 years old and its effects in each period. According to this researcher, studies should focus primarily on the age of 7 years because "the neurotoxicity of 14 and 20 are products of 7 years."