After years of legal battles, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced a ban on agricultural uses of a pesticide called chlorpyrifos. The ban comes 20 years after the use of the chemical was banned due to growing evidence of impaired neuronal development in children.
“Brown fat is the metabolic oven in our body that burns calories, as opposed to the normal fat that is used to store them,” says study author Gregory Steinberg. Capital.ro.
“We know that brown fat is activated during the cold and when we eat,” he says.
Develops insulin resistance and triggers obesity
The main finding of the new study, performed on guinea pigs, was that the chlorpyrifos pesticide suppresses the caloric burning functions of brown fat. This exacerbated the development of insulin resistance and a obesity the animal.
Previous studies in rodents have found a link between chlorpyrifos and obesity when animals are exposed to levels of chemicals that generally mimic levels of toxicity in real human life.
When mice are housed in temperatures warmer than about 29-30 ° C (84-86 ° F), they are less likely to suffer from thermal stresses that can disrupt natural metabolic rates. And in this new study, the researchers found that significantly lower levels of chlorpyrifos exposure triggered metabolic disturbances in brown fat when animals were housed in warmer thermoneutral environments.
In thermoneutral environments, only 0.5 mg of chlorpyrifos triggered weight gain and resistance to insulin.
Steinberg admits that the new findings have not yet been replicated in humans, but points out that low levels of pesticide exposure could lead to faster calorie burning.
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