"Damages caused by pesticides: even to the hormon of sociality"

<div style="text-align: justify;">Recent US studies have highlited the toxic effect of pesticides, and among their many deleterious effect they also interact with the neuropsycological development of children, confirming suspicions already raised among scintific community. In this article Gemma Calamandrei, researcher at the Italian Institute for Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità – ISS), explains how pesticides affect children, especially when they start talking. The toxic effect touches the brain organization and the way neurons establish their contacts, creating a negative effect on the IQ and on the children phrasing, that is on the quality of the language and on the "working memory", which has the role to understand information and to remember them in the short term. <br>A study undertaken in 2009 by ISS ascertained that mice exposed to an organophosphoric pesticide (the Italian active principle and name: clorpirifos) in the long term presented alteration at brain level of ossitocin, the so-called sociality hormon, acting on the brain circuits regulating affectivity. The result is an alteration of the social behaviour, manifesting itself with an excess of aggressiveness towards an element external to the group. If the problem is the need to recognise social signs, then a&nbsp; connection with autism can emerge. Furthermore, the foetus exposition to to 'clorpirifos' in the long term modifies the thyroid functionality, and many other organophosphoric and carbammate pesticides have similar deleterious effects on the nervous and endocrine system. To this purpose, biomonitoring studies measuring the children real exposure to such substances are very useful, but unfortunately they are undertaken only in the United States, to a much lesser extent in Europe and even less in Italy. <br></div><br>“Il Salvagente”, 30 June 2011, page 29<br>