A new study suggests a link between pesticides and ADHD.  Kids with high urine organophosphate levels are twice as likely to have some symptoms of ADHD.  Click here for the study, published in the May 2010 issue of Pediatrics.

Is this true?  It’s hard to know.  The data are 5-10 years old, and appear to be culled from a database collected for another purpose.  And the “diagnosis” of ADHD was made using a “structured parent interview” by phone, not a previously standardized questionnaire.  The kids were never examined, nor were school reports included, as would usually be the case for diagnosing ADHD.

In any event, I don’t think a parent could do much about this, other than washing fruits and vegetables before serving them.  There’s no point in routinely testing ADHD patients for organophosphate poisoning.

I was interviewed by WDEL radio about this topic.  To hear the interview as a .mp3, click here.

–  David Epstein, MD