Tuesday, April 27, 2010

environmental impacts of ADHD

I wrote a case study on ADHD and thought some of what I learned would apply to this blog, it's pretty interesting stuff....It's evident that there has been a dramatic increase in the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD. Environmental hazards, specifically

mercury and lead as neurotoxins, are mainly responsible due to the high correlation between

mercury and lead levels and ADHD:

- Children with ADHD have a mean blood mercury levels 6.6 nmol/L higher than children without ADHD

- Children with anything above 29 nmol/L had 9.69 times higher risks of having ADHD (Cheuk & Wong, 2006).

- Lead has a similar case; studies have found those with ADHD have higher levels of lead in their blood

(Nigg, 2008).

-Today, it is estimated that 25% of children in the U.S. are at risk for lead poisoning

(Morley, 2006).

- It is estimated that 3.8

million children have toxic levels of lead exposure from water-specific sources (Crocetti &

Mushak, 1999).


environmental policy does address this, but so far all efforts and establishments have been insufficient in taking care of this....



20 comments:

  1. Are there any particular parts of the country that are affected worse than others? If the study suggests that water quality is contributing to ADHD, has any research been done on people with ADHD that are not as exposed to lead?

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  2. If policy were to be implemented on this problem we must first address what exactly is causing these higher levels of mercury and lead poisoning. As Jacob wrote, it would be interesting to see what areas are especially effected by this problem so we might better be able to see what, where, and why this is happening and how to go about treating this problem.

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  3. I agree with Jacob. To see a clearer correlation between Mercury, lead and ADHD, corresponding affected areas would need to be shown. From there, pin-pointing the source of mercury and lead affecting specific areas could direct what policy would be most effective.

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  4. Well to start, there's plenty of mercury in fish. This made me think of "The Cove", a new documentary about the dolphin slaughtering happening in a small town in Japan. Dolphin meat is particularly high in mercury, and some of it is being served at local schools for lunch. In Japan, people are ignorant of the fact that their diets contain dangerous amounts of mercury, and even the government tries to cover up this information, saying their fish diet is their "way of life". I highly recommend the movie.

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  5. This is interesting. From the title along I was under the impression that people with ADHD were causing the environmental issues. Is this about Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder? I thought the only way you could get this was if you wanted a prescription for adderall.

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  6. I wonder if these cases are more serious/ more occurring in areas that have poor water purification treatment plants. If there was a correlation between poor drinking water and the amount of children in these populated regions do get affected with high levels of mercury or lead in their blood.

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  7. your information is very informative, but I also wonder about the increased diagnoses as a result of parents seeking out solutions to 'hyper' children and if this is merely correlation and not causation...

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  8. The title totally threw me off. I was expecting it to be an article about how people with ADHD steer oil tankers into icebergs while texting or something like that. What was this about again...oh yeah, mercury is bad.

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  9. Is there any genetic predisposition for ADHD? The relative newness of this condition would lead me to believe that there wouldn't be a lot of concrete evidence for this, but it seems more likely to me than mercury or lead poisoning.

    Going back to what Rachel said, I also think that parents look for an excuse to justify poor grades and performance in school, and ADHD and ADD are the go-to excuses right now. I'm not a doctor and can't question the validity of ADHD diagnoses however.

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  10. I do not think that this should be looked upon as purely an environmental problem. While it is true that we must study the impacts of all of our behavior and resource use on the environment, I think this particular issue should begin with the accountability towards doctors and parents. More often than not these diagnosis' are misinformed and given all to quickly.

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  11. Interesting data, but I certainly don't think that these statistics prove that there is a true correlation between mercury and lead levels and ADHD. There any number of other factors (such as their household environment, genetic predisposition, mother's behavior during pregnancy, ect.) that are thought by scientists to have an impact on ADHD. It is certainly possible that mercury and lead are contributing factors, but these statistics don't show their relation to all of the other possible contributing factors. In addition, it seems like parents have a lot of reasons to attempt to prevent their children from lead and mercury exposure other than just fear of ADHD, right ?

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  12. That's fascinating that ADHD is linked to lead and mercury. It's not really surprising though that it's linked to water, since we've known for a while that fish have high levels of mercury. I wonder if kids with ADHD are more likely to love sushi?

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  13. when I was a kid I was diagnosed with ADHD, and I love sushi, although I'm hardly a representative sample. I turned out ok, though I never can seem to stay in the same place too long. I wonder what my mercury levels are.

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  14. Increased mercury levels in fish have been directly linked to anthropogenic oceanic chemistry alteration, and biomagnification would further increase mercury levels from the simplest of organisms all the way up to your dinner plate. If mercury does in fact increase chances of ADHD diagnosis, then this would not surprise me at all.

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  15. I agree that it would be helpful to see these results broken down by locale. I'm also curious about whether this is a growing issue since ADHD is a recent issue in medicine.

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  16. This issue reminds me of the debate over the side effects and ethics of mandatory vaccination. Opponents claim that autism is caused by vaccinations, and in particular, the mercury present in the MMR vaccination most receive as a child. However, there have been 12 epidimiological studies done that show the correlations is false, and that the correlation between autism onset and vaccination is coincidental--autism just presents itself most commonly at the time when vaccinations are being given.

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  17. One interesting thing to think about is also the effects water fluoridation has on lead absorbtion in children. Currently, most of the U.S. public water supply is fluoridated (using silicofluorides) for supposed dental health effects. However, there have been some studies that point to increased blood levels of lead in children which live in areas that have a fluoridated public water supply. Research published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies (Sep 1999) scientists found siginificantly higher average blood levels in children living with silicofluoridated water. I wonder if there have been any ADHD studies in fluoridated vs unfluoridated communities?

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  18. SOURCE: ^^^
    http://www.lead.org.au/lanv7n4/L74-11.html

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  19. Wow I had no idea that Led and Mercury were related to ADHD. I mainly attributed the increase of cases of ADHD to lazy doctors giving over worried parents an easy fix. Its interesting to know these heavy metals have such a large effect even in such small amounts. This makes me wonder why lead paint is not fully illegal even in old homes and why there are still so many heavy metals found in drinking water.

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  20. This was an interesting discovery. It left me with a few questions before I can really evaluate it properly... first of all, what is the 'normal' mercury level for a kid without ADHD? that number would help bring more significance to the first two facts. Second, when you say that 25% of children are 'at risk', I can't really grasp the significance of the problem. Interesting topic though!

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