Avenir Santé Environnement association collected the hair and urine of 70 children aged 3 to 17, living in six municipalities in the agglomeration of Charente-Maritime. A hundred hairs had to be taken from each young person, up to 1 cm from the root.
Each of these hairs keeps even a tiny trace of the pollutants that have passed through their body and thus allows them to go back in time. “I wonder about the health of my daughters. I hope there won't be any, but the idea, if there are pesticides, is to push decision-makers to act,” says Sébastien Kalt, who came with his two teenage daughters aged 10 and 14. The first results will be sent to the association within four months, and the association will then propose a public restitution in the presence of scientists. The project is part of the “NEEXT” citizen project, an acronym meaning “Our children exposed to toxic substances”.