Attention-deficit environmental cause

Approximately 7% of all live-born humans bear birth defects. This value may be as high as 10% if children are evaluated to age 10 years to include subtle structural or functional deficits such as minimal brain dysfunction or attention deficit disorders. More than 560 000 lives out of 3 million births per year in the United States are lost through infant death, spontaneous abortion, stillbirths, and miscarriage due presumably to defective fetal development. The relative contributions to human teratogenesis have been estimated as follows known germinal mutations, 20% chromosomal and gene aberrations, 3-5% environmental causes such as radiation, <1% infections, 2% or 3% maternal metabolic imbalance, 1% or 2% drugs and environmental chemicals, 4% or 5% contributions from maternal dietary deficiencies or excesses and... 

What do Gulf War Syndrome, Katrina Cough, Aerospace Syndrome, and epidemic increases in the incidence of autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), birth defects, asthma, mailroom illness, spontaneous abortion, and many cancers have in common Each of these can be associated with a single causative agent, but each can also be associated with environmental exposure to chemical mixtures that do not contain any of the known causative agents. 

Exposures to developmental neurotoxins are believed to be responsible for the staggering numbers of affected children. In the United States, 5-10% of public school children have learning disabilities, up to 17% of children suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), approximately 1% of all children are mentally retarded and as many as 1 in 150 children born have autismJ5-6 Though some of these effects are genetically influenced, the available evidence suggests that environmental exposures and not genetics are the primary causes for these disorders. 5 ... 

Environmental risk factors include prenatal exposure to drugs such as alcohol and nicotine, obstetric complications, head injury, and psychosocial adversity (Biederman and Faraone, 2005 Romano et al., 2006). Prenatal exposure to ethanol affects mainly dopaminergic transmission and causes hyperactivity (Gibson et al., 2000). Rats exposed to ethanol prenatally show attention deficits that are similar to those of children with fetal alcohol syndrome and ADHD (Hausknecht et al., 2005). 

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