When Three is Not a Crowd . . . This is Science Today.
Young children are more susceptible than adults are to the harmful health effects of pesticides.
Because of this, many regulatory agencies are taking a special interest in protecting children from harmful pesticide exposure. Environmental health scientist, Thomas McKone of the University of California, Berkeley, is involved in a project looking into the use of pesticides and the levels in people. The overall goal of the project is to look at health effects, but a key part of that is to understand where it's coming from when you see it in the children. So they're taking a lot of blood samples and tissue samples to look at levels of pesticides. In the past, McKone says researchers have always looked at adults to understand the relationship between intake of chemicals and levels in our environment.