Mining 20 years of data, a new study by the National Institutes of Health has found a link between some pesticides and depression.
Dr. Freya Kamel, the lead researcher on the study, explains that only some pesticides--fumigants and organochlorine pesticides-- showed a connection to increased depression in those that applied them.
“What we were interested in was the possibility that the individuals who had just been using pesticides in a normal kind of way, and had never actually experienced pesticide poisoning, were having some effects of the pesticide exposure. And that’s exactly what we found. "
Most of the current regulations concerning pesticides are based on what happens in the short term after exposure as opposed to years of exposure. Dr. Kamel hopes that this study might change that.
