The NEUROPHYTO project ran from 2020 to 2023 and involved 4 partners (Ineris_UMR Peritox; Luxembourg Institute of Health; IRSET-INSERM; UPC-INSERM)*.
NEUROPHYTO's aim was to take stock of children's exposure to plant protection products in France, from in utero to age 3. This assessment was made possible by measuring numerous biomarkers of exposure in urine and hair on a population of 220 children from the national Elfe cohort (longitudinal study since childhood).
It has enabled the acquisition of new knowledge on exposure to phytopharmaceuticals and the associated potential risks for children's neuropsychological and motor development. The project benefited from the contribution of innovative methods such as PBPK modeling (physiologically-based pharmacokinetics), and the development of “adverse effect pathway” models (or AOP models for Adverse Outcome Pathways).
Different methodologies, traditionally applied separately, have been brought together in this project, making it innovative and multidisciplinary: biomonitoring, epidemiology, toxicokinetic modeling, computational toxicology and human health risk assessment.
In concrete terms, the NEUROPHYTO project has produced original plant protection product impregnation values for 220 children aged 3.5 in the Elfe cohort (around 160 biomarkers investigated in urine and hair). The chlorpyrifos measurements carried out on the children in 2014-2015, the exposure estimated by modeling and the risk assessment carried out in the project have shown the importance of the withdrawal of marketing authorizations for chlorpyrifos- and chlorpyrifos-methyl-based plant protection products in France by the Anses in 2020, on the basis of the 2020 European regulation concerning the non-renewal of the approval of these active substances on the European market.
The PBPK modeling developed for a mixture of 3 pyrethroids and implemented in the project, coupled with a child-specific risk assessment, also identified that the no-effect exposure level for permethrin could be exceeded in some children.
The NEUROPHYTO project demonstrates the importance of continuing studies aimed at better characterizing exposure to plant protection products, as well as those focusing on exposure in children and the specific effects linked to neurodevelopment. Future studies are needed to better understand the contribution of different routes of exposure (such as inhalation or dermal) and the sources of exposure, in order to reduce the exposure of young French children to these substances.
The Neurophyto project is one of eleven selected under the 2019 call for research projects entitled “Plant protection products, human and ecosystem health: from exposure to impact”, funded by the research & innovation axis of the Ecophyto plan. Led by Ineris in association with teams from the Institut de Santé du Luxembourg, the Institut de recherche en santé, environnement et travail (IRSET) and Université Paris Cité, it ran from 2019 to 2023.
