New, Comprehensive Study Demonstrates DNA Damage from Real-World Pesticide Exposure

HHRA helped to fund this new study that showed that standard regulatory risk assessment methods may be missing important health impacts from pesticide exposure.

Paul Hartnett, HHRA’s Executive Director
Paul Hartnett has served as HHRA’s CFO since our founding . Paul has now joined the board as Treasurer and Executive Director.
Heartland Study Enrolls 1,000th Mother-Infant Pair
July 19, 2024 – In June of this year, the Heartland Study achieved a major milestone, enrolling its 1,000th mother-infant pair. Enrollment is now at 50% of goal. The objective of the Study is to help fill major gaps in our understanding of the impacts of herbicides on maternal and infant health. Currently in Phase 1, the Study is focused on evaluating associations between herbicide concentrations in body fluids and tissue samples from pregnant women and infants, and pregnancy/childbirth outcomes. Phase 2 is designed to evaluate potential associations between herbicide biomarkers and early childhood neurological development. Much appreciation for the mothers enrolled, and the entire Heartland Study Team including scientists, support staff and clinicians for this tremendous achievement, and for our funders to making this work possible. Read more about the study including peer-reviewed studies published in Chemosphere and Agrichemicals at our publications page. The investment required to conduct this study exceeds $1 million each year. You can support this important work by making a donation here.
HHRA’s 2023 Annual Report
Last year was a year of progress for the HHRA and the Heartland Study. Read about it here!
Supporting HHRA and the Heartland Study Through Donor-Advised Funds
An increasingly popular way to manage charitable giving is by donating cash, securities, or other assets into a donor-advised fund (DAF), from which you will receive an immediate tax deduction. From this, donors can recommend grants to IRS-qualified nonprofit organizations. DAFs are one of the easiest and most tax-advantageous ways to “grow” resources earmarked for future charitable giving. The HHRA is an IRS-qualified organization, and we encourage you to use your DAF, if you have one, to support our mission. You can find three simple steps to supporting our research via your DAF here. Simple and convenient, your DAF can have genuine effects on the health of mothers, babies, and future generations. Thank you!
HHRA-funded Dicamba study published in “agrochemicals”
Dicamba and 2,4-D in the Urine of Pregnant Women in the Midwest: Comparison of Two Cohorts (2010–2012 vs. 2020–2022) Abstract Currently, there are no known human biomonitoring studies that concurrently examine biomarkers of dicamba and 2,4-D. We sought to compare biomarkers of exposure to herbicides in pregnant women residing in the US Midwest before and after the adoption of dicamba-tolerant soybean technology using urine specimens obtained in 2010–2012 from the Nulliparous Pregnancy Outcomes Study: Monitoring Mothers-to-be (N = 61) and in 2020–2022 from the Heartland Study (N = 91). Specific gravity-standardized concentration levels for each analyte were compared between the cohorts, assuming data are lognormal and specifying values below the LOD as left-censored. The proportion of pregnant individuals with dicamba detected above the LOD significantly increased from 28% (95% CI: 16%, 40%) in 2010–2012 to 70% (95% CI: 60%, 79%) in 2020–2022, and dicamba concentrations also significantly increased from 0.066 μg/L (95% CI: 0.042, 0.104) to 0.271 μg/L (95% CI: 0.205, 0.358). All pregnant individuals from both cohorts had 2,4-D detected. Though 2,4-D concentration levels increased, the difference was not significant (p-value = 0.226). Reliance on herbicides has drastically increased in the last ten years in the United States, and the results obtained in this study highlight the need to track exposure and impacts on adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes. Keywords: pesticide; exposure; 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid; human biomonitoring You can read the paper here.

HHRA research partners at King’s College in London and the Ramazzini Institute have published a new study that suggests that regulatory risk assessments may be missing the mark on pesticide health impacts.

The study uses the latest multi-omics analytical methods – meaning that it looks at the impact from pesticide exposure across multiple body systems, or “omes” (i.e. genome, metabolome/metabolism, microbiome, etc.). As reported in this summary from GMWatch, the cutting-edge analysis showed that exposure to mixtures of pesticides, including glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides, at levels considered safe can “cause ill health effects that are completely missed by the standard safety tests required for regulatory assessments” (GMWatch, 2021).

The researchers fed rats a mixture of pesticides at levels allowed based on current regulatory limits: azoxystrobin, boscalid, chlorpyrifos, glyphosate, imidacloprid and thiabendazole. All six are commonly found in the European food supply.

Standard safety tests found no significant impact from this pesticide-contaminated diet, but a more detailed multi-omics examination told a different story. “The results showed that the low-dose mixture of pesticides tested caused changes in the metabolites of the gut and blood, with consequences to liver function, with the whole picture being suggestive of an oxidative stress response. Oxidative stress is an imbalance in the body that can lead to conditions such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, DNA damage, and cancer” (GMWatch, 2021).

This study is the latest to suggest that common regulatory risk assessment practices may be missing some worrisome health impacts from real-world exposure to pesticides or mixtures of pesticides. HHRA is supporting this kind of cutting-edge science so that we can share these findings with the public and policy makers, and advance our mission to protect public and environmental health.

Sources:

GMWatch.org; “Pesticides often found in EU foods cause ill health effects missed by regulatory safety tests;” Date Published: April 15, 2021, Date Accessed: April 23, 2021.

Mesnage, R., Teixeira, M., Mandrioli, D., Falcioni, L., Ibragim, M., Ducarmon, Q. R., Zwittink, R. D., Amiel, C., Panoff, J. M., Bourne, E., Savage, E., Mein, C. A., Belpoggi, F., & Antoniou, M. N.; “Multi-omics phenotyping of the gut-liver axis reveals metabolic perturbations from a low-dose pesticide mixture in rats;” Communications Biology, 2021, 4(1), 471; DOI: 10.1038/s42003-021-01990-w.