Conception: Experts Identity Pesticide Which Can Damage Fetuses

Are you a young woman who desires to conceive and deliver healthy babies, but then are exposed to the use of certain pesticide?

If so, this piece should be of interest to you, especially women involved in the cultivation of crops and have to use herbicides to control weeds around them from time to time.

The Environmental Protection Agency of the US has warned of dire consequences of undue exposure to pesticides, and has in fact ordered a stop to the use of a particular one that it says could harm fetuses

Called dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate (also known as DCPA or Dacthal), the herbicide is used to control weeds on a variety of crops, including broccoli, onions, kale, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and strawberries.

Though the pesticide is used to on weeds, the possibility of human exposure is certain, and because of this, experts have warned to be careful.

A pregnant woman if exposed to the chemical, could cause changes to fetal thyroid hormone levels, the EPA said.

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Low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased IQ and impaired motor skills later in life, are part of the consequences, the agency says.

To that extent, the EPA has moved to stop use of the pesticide.

“DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately,” Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said in a statement.

“It’s EPA’s job to protect people from exposure to dangerous chemicals,” Freedhoff said in the statement. “In this case, pregnant women who may never even know they were exposed could give birth to babies that experience irreversible lifelong health problems.”

There are additional reports that although the DCPA has been banned in the European Union since 2009, but other countries were yet to follow suit.

“As an organization led by farmworker women, we know intimately the harm that pesticides, including dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate (DCPA or Dacthal), can inflict on our bodies and communities,” Mily Treviño Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, a national organization of women farmworkers, has been quoted as saying in reaction.

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“This emergency decision is a great first step that we hope will be in a series of others that are based on listening to farmworkers, protecting our reproductive health, and safeguarding our families.”

Apparently, women of conception age have to take adequate care which kind of herbicides they are exposed to.

The suspension came after more than a decade of back-and-forth between the EPA and the sole manufacturer of DCPA, the AMVAC Chemical Corporation.

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