Population-based study finds prenatal exposures to plasticizers and pesticides significantly impair cognitive abilities in adolescents, suggesting long-term effects.
= 539). Child cognitive performance was assessed using the vocabulary, matrix reasoning, digit span, and coding subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale at 13 years. Using hierarchical Bayesian kernel machine regression, we found that prenatal EDC mixture level at 75th percentile versus the median was associated with 0.33 decrease (95% credible interval: -0.60, -0.06) in verbal comprehension and with 0.26 decrease (-0.51, -0.02) in matrix reasoning scores, with di(2-ethyhexyl) phthalate and dibutyl phthalates as primary contributing chemicals to the mixture effect for matrix reasoning. Higher childhood levels of EDC mixture were associated with higher verbal scores, in contrast to the inverse associations observed for prenatal exposure, although this finding should be interpreted with caution due to potential exposure misclassification, selection bias, and residual confounding. Overall, our findings suggest that prenatal exposure to a mixture of plasticizers and pesticides may have a long-lasting adverse effect on offspring's cognition.
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Mou et al. (2026) studied this question.
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