Pesticides Suspected in Bee Brain Damage and Species Decline? Don' t They Know It's Gotta Be Genetic?

                                          pdphoto.org                          honey bee by autan

A UK Guardian article  Bee decline could be down to chemical cocktail interfering with brains

reports fears that pesticides are causing damage to the brains of bees causing cognitive and communication disorders which have seen sharp declines in the overall number of bee species which are vitally important to the pollination of the world's crops:

"According to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, three of the 25 British species of bumblebees are already extinct and half of the remainder have shown serious declines, often up to 70%, since around the 1970s. In addition, around 75% of all butterfly species in the UK have been shown to be in decline. The new £10m Insect Pollinators Initiative (IPI), the largest programme to date of its kind, will look at the multiple reasons thought to be behind this devastation in insect population.

Chris Connolly of Dundee University's Centre for Neuroscience has been awarded £1.5m to lead the work on whether pesticides are having an affect on the brains of bees. Pesticides could be blocking the electrical and chemical signals between neurons, he said, and only subtle changes may be required to produce serious brain disorders. These problems might stop bees identifying the best sources of nectar, or it might affect their ability to navigate to nearby food source and back home again.


Brain disorders in bees might also interfere with their ability to communicate with nest-mates using the "waggle dance", where bees come back to their hive and spread information about the food sources they have found."

Those poor misguided Brits. Haven't they learned that when it comes to neurological disorders there are no environmental factors involved?

Haven't they heard of the flawed statistical surveys of human beings which demonstrate beyond any question, or demonstrate somewhat anyways, that neurological disorders like autism are 100% genetic?.

Haven't they heard that when it comes to neurological disorders like .. oh .. say .. autism ... "it's gotta be genetic"?

Autism Pesticide Link Study Available Online at Environmental Health Perspectives

The study Maternal Residence Near Agricultural Pesticide Applications and Autism Spectrum Disorders Among Children in the California Central Valley, Eric M. Roberts, Paul B. English, Judith K. Grether, Gayle C. Windham, Lucia Somberg, and Craig Wolff doi:10.1289/ehp.10168 (available at http://dx.doi.org/) Online 30 July 2007 which suggests a potential autism pesticide link is available online on an open access basis at:

http://www.ehponline.org/members/2007/10168/10168.pdf

The abstract of the article states:

Abstract Background. Ambient levels of pesticides (“pesticide drift”) are detectable at residences near agricultural field sites. Objective. To evaluate the hypothesis that maternal residence near agricultural pesticide applications during key periods of gestation could be associated with the development of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in children. Methods. We identified 465 children with ASD born during 1996-1998 using the California Department of Developmental Services electronic files and matched them by maternal date of last menstrual period to 6,975 live born, normal birthweight, term infants as controls. Proximity to pesticide applications was determined using California Department of Pesticide Regulation records refined using Department of Water Resources land use polygons. A staged analytic design applying a priori criteria to the results of conditional logistic regressions was employed to exclude associations likely due to multiple testing error. Results. Of 249 unique hypotheses, four that described organochlorine pesticide applications—specifically those of dicofol and endosulfan—occurring during the period immediately prior to and concurrent with CNS embryogenesis (clinical weeks 1 through 8) met a priori criteria and were unlikely to be a result of multiple testing. Multivariate a posteriori models comparing children of mothers living within 500 m of field sites with the highest non-zero quartile of organochlorine poundage to those with mothers not living near field sites suggested an odds ratio for ASD of 6.1 (95%-confidence interval 2.4-15.3). ASD risk increased with poundage of organochlorine applied and decreased with distance from field sites.

Study Suggests Possible Autism Pesticide Link

The LA Times reports on a study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, suggesting a possible causal link between pesticides and autism. The LAT is careful to point out that the study used a small sample size, that the California Department of Public Health which conducted the study is only characterizing the results as preliminary data indicating that there MAY be an association between the pesticides which were the subject of the study and incidents of autism.

Women who live near California farm fields sprayed with organochlorine pesticides may be more likely to give birth to children with autism, according to a study by state health officials to be published today.

The rate of autism among the children of 29 women who lived near the fields was extremely high, suggesting that exposure to the insecticides in the womb might have played a role. The study is the first to report a link between pesticides and the neurological disorder, which affects one in every 150 children.

But the state scientists cautioned that their finding is highly preliminary because of the small number of women and children involved and lack of evidence from other studies.

"We want to emphasize that this is exploratory research," said Dr. Mark Horton, director of the California Department of Public Health. "We have found very preliminary data that there may be an association. We are in no way concluding that there is a causal relationship between pesticide exposure of pregnant women and autism."

The two pesticides implicated are older-generation compounds developed in the 1950s and used to kill mites, primarily on cotton as well as some vegetables and other crops. Their volumes have declined substantially in recent years.

Examining three years of birth records and pesticide data, scientists from the Public Health Department determined that the Central Valley women lived within 500 meters, or 547 yards, of fields sprayed with organochlorine pesticides during their first trimester of pregnancy. Eight of them, or 28%, had children with autism. Their rate of autism was six times greater than for mothers who did not live near the fields, the study said.

- LA Times, July 30, 2007