Cynthia Curl, an associate professor in the School of Public and Population Health, was featured in a New York Times article titled, “What a White House Report Says (and Doesn’t Say) About Pesticides and Health.”
A recent study Curl co-authored titled: “Associations of prenatal glyphosate exposure with child neurodevelopment in a Canadian pregnancy cohort study,” examines associations of maternal urinary glyphosate levels with child cognitive, social and behavioral functioning.
In the article, Curl shares that exposure to glyphosate — a chemical herbicide used to destroy weeds and unwanted vegetation in a broad variety of crops — can occur among agricultural workers and people who live in agricultural communities. Those who live in agricultural communities may be exposed to pesticide spray drifting through the air.
While California and Arizona have implemented pesticide use reporting requirements that alert people living in areas where spray will be utilized, those living in other states do not have access to that same kind of information, Curl said. As a leading environmental health scientist, Curl has studied glyphosate exposure among farmworkers, people living in agricultural regions and now children.
Curl is also the director of Boise State’s Agricultural Health Lab. Visit the lab’s website to learn more about Curl’s research on glyphosate exposure and similar environmental health topics.