| Organic Diets Significantly Lower Children's Dietary Exposure to Organophosphorus Pesticides Chensheng Lu,1 Kathryn Toepel,2 Rene Irish,2 Richard A. Fenske,2 Dana B. Barr,3 and Roberto Bravo3 1Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 2Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA; 3National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Abstract
We used a novel study design to measure dietary organophosphorus pesticide exposure in a group of 23 elementary school-age children through urinary biomonitoring. We substituted most of children's conventional diets with organic food items for 5 consecutive days and collected two spot daily urine samples, first-morning and before-bedtime voids, throughout the 15-day study period. We found that the median urinary concentrations of the specific metabolites for malathion and chlorpyrifos decreased to the nondetect levels immediately after the introduction of organic diets and remained nondetectable until the conventional diets were reintroduced. The median concentrations for other organophosphorus pesticide metabolites were also lower in the organic diet consumption days ; however, the detection of those metabolites was not frequent enough to show any statistical significance. In conclusion, we were able to demonstrate that an organic diet provides a dramatic and immediate protective effect against exposures to organophosphorus pesticides that are commonly used in agricultural production. We also concluded that these children were most likely exposed to these organophosphorus pesticides exclusively through their diet. To our knowledge, this is the first study to employ a longitudinal design with a dietary intervention to assess children's exposure to pesticides. It provides new and persuasive evidence of the effectiveness of this intervention. Key words: children's pesticide exposure, chlorpyrifos, dietary pesticide exposure, malathion, organic diet, organophosphorus pesticides, urinary biomonitoring. Environ Health Perspect 114: 260-263 (2006) . doi:10.1289/ehp.8418 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 1 September 2005]
Address correspondence to C. Lu, 1518 Clifton Rd. NE, Room 226, Atlanta, GA 30322 USA. Telephone: (404) 727-2131. Fax: (404) 727-8744. E-mail: clu2@sph.emory.edu We express our sincere appreciation to the children who participated and to their parents, who greatly assisted in this study. We also thank P. Sande for assistance in collecting daily specimen samples ; A. Bishop, P. Restrepo, R. Walker, J. Nguyen, and D. Walden at the CDC for their help with sample analysis ; and the Mercer Island School District in Mercer Island, Washington, for granting our request of circulating the study flyers in their elementary schools for subject recruitment. This study was supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program (RD-829364) . Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official view of the U.S. EPA. The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 21 June 2005 ; accepted 1 September 2005.
The full version of this article is available for free in HTML or PDF formats. |
