Persistent behavioral alterations in rats neonatally exposed to low doses of the organophosphate pesticide, parathion.

Although developmental exposures of rats to low levels of the organophosphate pesticides (OPs), chlorpyrifos (CPF) or diazinon (DZN), both cause persistent neurobehavioral effects, there are important differences in their neurotoxicity. The current study extended investigation to parathion (PTN), an OP that has higher systemic toxicity than either CPF or DZN. We gave PTN on postnatal days (PND) 1-4 at doses spanning the threshold for systemic toxicity (0, 0.