Friday, April 22, 2011 by: S. L. Baker,
Does it ever seem like the population is being "dumbed down"? Maybe that is
literally happening -- even before birth. And at least one of the culprits appears to be
organophosphate pesticides that are widely used on food crops throughout the U.S.
The evidence for the intelligence robbing effect of these poisons isn't some obscure study
in lab animals, either. This is a major discovery involving human children in multiple
studies. The results of three separate research papers have just been published in the
journal Environmental Health Perspectives and all document this alarming fact: pesticides could be robbing many
humans of their maximum intelligence
potential.
"These associations are substantial, especially when viewing this at a
population-wide level," said study principal investigator Brenda Eskenazi, UC
Berkeley professor of epidemiology and of maternal and child health, in a statement to the media. "That
difference could mean, on average, more kids being shifted into the lower end of the
spectrum of learning, and more kids
needing special services in school."
This isn't a problem limited to children
living near farms where pesticides are regularly sprayed, either. The other two studies, one conducted by scientists at Mt. Sinai Medical
Center and the other by researchers at Columbia University, investigated pesticide exposure in urban
populations in New York City.
The Mt. Sinai research involved
assessing toddlers at 12 and 24 months of age using standardized testing that measures
cognitive and psychomotor development in young children. Then, when the children were
between six and nine years old, the researchers administered skill and intelligence tests.
The results? Just as the UC Berkeley
researchers found, the Mt. Sinai scientists discovered that exposure to organophosphates
negatively impacted perceptual reasoning. In plain English, that means the children did
not have the level of nonverbal problem-solving skills that normal, healthy kids are
expected to have.
Both the UC Berkeley and Mt. Sinai research teams measured pesticide metabolites in
maternal urine; the scientists at Columbia measured umbilical cord blood levels of a specific pesticide,
chlorpyrifos. And, it's important to note, the Columbia study is the first to look at
neurotoxicity of chlorpyrifos exposure before birth to see how it impacts cognitive
development as children reach school age.
Although it was banned for indoor use in homes by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) in 2001, chlorpyrifos was once an extremely popular organophosphate pesticide for
residential use and still lingers in the environment. The Columbia
researchers found that the amount of chlorpyrifos in babies' blood was linked to
neurodevelopmental problems by age three and these deficits persisted at least through age
seven -- with possible long-term educational implications.
What's more, consider this extremely important finding: the decline in intelligence test scores
began at the lowest exposure to the pesticide. The test scores spiraled down more with
increasing exposure levels. This suggests, the scientists said in a press statement,
there is "..no evidence of a
threshold, below which exposures are completely safe."
"These observed deficits in cognitive functioning at 7 years of age could have
implications for school performance," Virginia Rauh, ScD, deputy director of the
Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH), and lead author of the
Columbia study, said in a statement to the press. "Working memory problems may
interfere with reading comprehension, learning and academic achievement, even if general
intelligence remains in the normal range."
Since the EPA ban took effect, exposure
to the organophosphate has measurably declined somewhat. However, agricultural use of
chlorpyrifos is still permitted in the U.S. and pregnant women, especially in agricultural
communities, are still being exposed to this potentially intelligence-zapping chemical.
"Manufacturers withdrew chlorpyrifos and diazinon, two types of organophosphate
pesticides, from the residential market. Despite this, general population exposure to
organophosphate pesticides is ongoing," Stephanie Engel, PhD, who led the Mt.
Sinai School of Medicine study , explained in the media statement.
For more information:
Bouchard et al., "Prenatal Exposure to Organophosphate Pesticides and IQ in
7-Year-Old Children," http://ehponline.org/article/info:d....
Engel et al., "Prenatal Exposure to Organophosphates, Paraoxonase 1, and Cognitive
Development in Childhood," http://ehponline.org/article/info:d....
"To Achieve World
Government it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism,
their loyalty to family traditions and national identification" Brock Chisholm - Director of the World Health Organization
"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to
believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a
reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police
State Dictatorship it's going to
get." Ian Williams Goddard
The fact is that "political correctness" is all about creating uniformity. Individualism is one of the biggest obstacles in the way of the New World Order. They want a public that is predictable and conditioned to do as it's told without asking questions.
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." Thomas Jefferson