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Children frequently exposed to household insecticides used on plants, lawns and in head lice shampoos appear to run double the risk of developing childhood leukaemia, research suggests.
A study by French doctors, published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, supports concerns raised in recent years about the use of toxic insecticides around the home and garden — including plant sprays, medication shampoos and mosquito repellents — and a possible correlation with increased rates of acute leukaemia in children.
The latest study by Inserm, France’s national institute for medical research, was based on 280 children who had acute leukaemia, newly diagnosed and 288 children matched for sex and age but disease free.
Detailed interviews were carried out with each mother. These included questions about the employment history of both parents, the use of insecticides in the home and garden and the use of insecticidal shampoos against head lice.
It showed that the risk of developing acute leukaemia was almost twice as likely in children whose mothers said that they had used insecticides in the home while pregnant and long after the birth.
Exposure to garden insecticides and fungicides as a child was associated with a more than doubling of disease occurrence. The use of insecticidal shampoos for head lice was associated with almost twice the risk.
Describing the links as “significant”, the authors said that preventive action should be considered to ensure that the health risks to children were as small as possible. A group of pesticides known as carbamates, which are present in plant treatments, lice shampoos and insect sprays, are most commonly linked to cases of leukaemia.
Florence Menegaux, the lead researcher based at the Paris headquarters, and her fellow authors said that no one agent could be singled out and a causal relation between insecticides and the development of acute childhood leukaemia “remains questionable”. But they said that the patterns revealed suggested that the results should be acted on and “preventative action” considered.
Leukaemia is the term used to describe a number of cancers of the blood cells. In children about 85 per cent of these are acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, and acute myeloid leukaemia accounts for most of the rest.
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