In a study published Monday, a team of international researchers, some of whom are attached to Inserm, investigated the effects of prenatal and postnatal chlordecone exposure on the cognitive and behavioral abilities of West Indian children.
Chlordecone is an insecticide, used in the West Indies from 1973 to 1993 to control the banana weevil, an insect that wreaks havoc on crops. But through its massive use, the toxic product has gradually contaminated the soils and rivers of the West Indies. So much so that populations in turn have been poisoned by consuming contaminated food.
A total of 576 children from Guadeloupe participated in the study. The “work shows that such exposure is associated with lower scores on tests to assess cognitive abilities and behavioral disorders,” Inserm says in a press release.
A study conducted on 576 children
Chlordecone is now recognized as an endocrine disruptor, neurotoxic, toxic to reproduction and development, and also a carcinogen, Inserm stresses. Previous animal studies had shown that exposure of females to the pesticide resulted in “neurobehavioral and learning disorders in the litter.”
This new study shows this time the ravages of chlordecone in children exposed at an early age, even in their mother’s womb. To assess its contamination, the concentration of chlordecone was measured in the blood of the umbilical cord, as well as in the blood of 7-year-old children. Regarding intellectual abilities, they were measured through the children’s verbal comprehension, their information processing speed, their working memory and their perceptual reasoning.
The mothers were also questioned to see if they measured their children’s behavioral difficulties.
dramatic results
The results are alarming. They report a 3% increase in so-called internalized behavioral difficulties, such as emotional or relational difficulties in the children studied, the vast majority in girls.
Same dramatic observation for the intellectual abilities of children: “decrease of 0.64 IQ points for a doubling of the level of exposure,” reports Inserm. Before adding: “This is reflected, especially in boys, in a decrease in the indices that evaluate perceptual reasoning, working memory and verbal comprehension.”
Inserm concludes in its press release that “exposure to chlordecone during periods of intrauterine development or during childhood is associated with decreased intellectual abilities and increased behavioral difficulties.”
A closed investigation without follow-up
Last January, the Paris prosecutor’s office signed a stay order in the framework of the investigation into the large-scale poisoning in the French West Indies with chlordecone.
The two investigating magistrates had recognized a “sanitary scandal”, as well as an “environmental attack whose human, economic and social consequences affect and will affect the daily life of the inhabitants for many years.” However, they had anticipated the difficulty of collecting evidence.
Source: BFM TV
