A number of common chemicals can have a knock-on effect with thyroid hormone actions in pregnant women.
This is key in brain development in foetuses and young children, according to a report published in Endocrine Connections.
Rising levels of chemical production has led to “widespread environmental chemical contamination,” according to the review.
The review warned current public health policy “does not fully address the risks to vulnerable populations.”
Professor Barbara Demeneix, Universite Paris-Sorbonne, whose Centre National de la Recherché Scientifique headed up the review, said: “We have reviewed the documented exposures of pregnant women and children to mixtures of thyroid-hormone-disrupting chemicals and propose that the data sets provide a plausible link to the recent increased incidence of neurodevelopment conditions, including autism spectrum disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorders.
“Many experts in the field consider that the current testing guidelines for thyroid-disrupting chemicals are not sufficiently sensitive, do not take into account recent findings and do not adequately consider risks to vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women.”
Maternal thyroid hormones are key to help with the normal brain development of children and previous studies have discovered even moderate disruption can hit cognitive development and impacts upon the risk of brain development disorders in children.
