Manganese in drinking water may impair children's intellectual abilities

October, 2010

The ‘safe’ levels of manganese in water may need to be revisited after a study finds school-age children with high levels of manganese in their tap water have significantly lower IQs.

Manganese exposure in the workplace is known to have neurotoxic effects, but manganese occurs naturally in soil and sometimes in groundwater. One region where the groundwater contains naturally high levels of manganese is Quebec. A study involving 362 Quebec children, aged 6-13, has measured both the concentrations of metals (manganese, iron, copper, lead, zinc, arsenic, magnesium and calcium) in their tap water, and their cognitive abilities.

Although manganese concentrations were well below current guidelines, the average IQ of those whose tap water was in the upper 20% was 6.2 points below children whose water contained little or no manganese. The association was more marked for Performance IQ than Verbal IQ (Performance IQ reflects perceptual organization and processing speed). The analysis took into account factors such as family income, maternal intelligence, maternal education, and the presence of other metals in the water. No association was found between manganese in their food and IQ.

www.physorg.com/news204177632.html
Full text available at: http://www.uqam.ca/salledepresse/pdf/ehp.pdf

Reference: 

[1864] Bouchard, M. F., Sauvé S., Barbeau B., Legrand M., Brodeur M-È., Bouffard T., et al.
(2010).  Intellectual Impairment in School-Age Children Exposed to Manganese from Drinking Water.
Environmental Health Perspectives.

Related News

Children living in areas where homicides committed have lower reading, verbal test scores

A study using data on reported homicides in Chicago 1994-2002 and two independent surveys of children and families in Chicago, has revealed that African-American children who were assessed directly after a local homicide occurred scored substantially lower on vocabulary and reading assessments th
ADHD linked to welfare benefits, low maternal education, solo parents

A national Swedish study involving the 1.16 million children in a national birth cohort identified nearly 8000 on the country's Prescribed Drug Register as using a prescription for ADHD medication (and thus assumed to suffer from severe ADHD).
At-risk children who can self-regulate have higher test scores

A study following nearly 1300 young children from birth through the first grade provides more evidence for the importance of self-regulation for academic achievement.
Prenatal meth exposure associated with brain abnormalities

An imaging study has revealed that children (aged 5-15) whose mothers abused methamphetamine and alcohol during pregnancy had structural abnormalities in the brain that were more severe than those seen in children whose mothers abused alcohol alone.
Repeated anesthesia can affect children's ability to learn

Supporting the idea that repeated anaesthesia in children can lead to memory impairment, a rodent study has revealed that repeated anaesthesia wiped out a large portion of the stem cells in the

Children's cognitive ability affected by prenatal exposure to urban air pollutants

A five-year study involving 214 children born to healthy, non-smoking Caucasian women in Krakow, Poland, has found that those prenatally exposed to high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) had a significant reduction in scores on a standardized test of reasoning abi
Inner-face advantage in familiar face recognition

Although we initially tend to pay attention to obvious features such as hair, it has been long established that familiar faces are recognized better from their inner (eyes, nose, mouth) rather than their outer (hair, hairline, jaw, ears) parts1.

Pages

Subscribe to Latest newsSubscribe to Latest newsSubscribe to Latest health newsSubscribe to Latest news