Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Your environmental exposures might haunt your great-grandchildren


Your environmental exposures might haunt your great-grandchildren

In Australia there are increasing reports of unruly children and teenagers running amok, bullying classmates, attacking police, teachers, parents, etc, etc. No doubt this is because of a variety of reasons but I have wondered what possible role their increasing addiction to wireless technology, i.e., mobile phones. wi fi, etc. might have in their anti-social behaviour – and whether chemical exposures could also be a factor. For example, in the 1990′s the Swedish Union of Clerical and Technical Employees in Industry (SiF) had produced a number of publications on both chemical and EMF hazards in the modern workplace ( See: http://www.emfacts.com/download/no_risk_Feb_7.pdf ). This was examined in far more detail in Gunni Nordstrom’s excellent book, The Invisible Disease, that chronicles the issue of chemical/EMR hazards in the workplace. (See: http://www.amazon.com/The-Invisible-Disease-Environmental-Electromagnetic/dp/1903816718 ). Evidence indicates that chemical exposure may increase susceptibility to EMR exposure. Perhaps EMR exposure also increases susceptibility to chemicals?

Consider
Research by the Karolinska Institute found that since 1972, when levels of Brominated Flame Retardants (related to PCBs) were virtually undetectable in human breast milk, dramatic annual increases have been measured. Much of this was apparently due to contaminated and recirculated air from outgassing electrical equipment in modern office buildings and from contamination in food. ( SiF, No Risk in the IT environment )
According to the Chapel Hill Consensus statement “the published scientific literature on human and animal exposure to low doses of BPA … reveals that human exposure to BPA is within the range that is predicted to be biologically active in over 95% of people sampled.”www.environmentalhealthnews.org/…/2007-0801bpaconsensus.pdf

So, we all are carrying around a potentially toxic load of chemicals in our bodies but it is not known what the effect of these chemicals will be for our health and longevity – or the legacy for our children.

Of importance here is the evidence that EMR exposure can cause leakage through the blood-brain barrier (BBB) – therefore allowing chemicals already circulating in the bloodstream to enter the brain and do cause damage on a neurological level.

Now consider the implications of the rat study findings by researchers at Washington State University on chemical exposures of rats and the effects on their descendants (below). It would be interesting to re-run the experiment but this time also expose a number of rats to both vin­clo­zolin and EMR to see what additional effect that might have on their offspring.

Don Maisch
************************************************************************************
May 23, 2012
Courtesy of Washington State University
and World Science staff

Sci­en­tists have found in­creased stress sen­si­ti­vity and dif­fer­ences in weight gain in rats whose an­ces­tors were ex­posed to a hor­mone-dis­rupt­ing chem­i­cal three genera­t­ions ear­li­er.

The re­search­ers ex­posed preg­nant rats to vin­clo­zolin, a pop­u­lar fruit and veg­e­ta­ble fun­gi­cide known to dis­rupt hor­mones. They then put the ro­dents’ great-grandpups through var­i­ous tests and found them more anx­ious, stress-sen­si­tive and prone to great­er ac­ti­vity in stress-related brain ar­eas than un­ex­posed rats’ de­scen­dants.

“We are now in the third hu­man genera­t­ion since the start of the chem­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion, since hu­mans have been ex­posed to these kinds of tox­ins,” said Da­vid Crews of the Uni­vers­ity of Tex­as at Aus­tin, one of the in­ves­ti­ga­tors. “This is the an­i­mal mod­el of that.”
The dif­fer­ences in weight gain seen in the study were in­tri­guing but re­quire fur­ther stu­dy, he added.

It seems clear that “the an­ces­tral ex­po­sure of your great grand­moth­er al­ters your brain de­vel­op­ment to then re­spond to stress dif­fer­ent­ly,” said Mi­chael Skin­ner of Wash­ing­ton State Uni­vers­ity, who worked with Crews. The find­ings are pub­lished in the lat­est is­sue of the jour­nal Pro­ceed­ings of the Na­t­ional Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.

The re­search­ers had pre­vi­ously found vin­clo­zolin ex­po­sure can ef­fect sub­se­quent genera­t­ions by af­fect­ing how genes are turned on and off, a pro­cess called epi­ge­net­ics. In that case, the ep­i­ge­net­ic in­her­it­ance al­tered how rats choose mates.

The new re­search goes fur­ther.

“How well you so­cial­ize or how your anx­i­e­ty lev­els re­spond to stress may be as much your an­ces­tral ep­i­ge­net­ic in­her­it­ance as your in­di­vid­ual early-life events,” Skin­ner said. This could ex­plain why some peo­ple suf­fer post-traumatic stress syn­drome while oth­ers don’t, he added.

“We have been see­ing real in­creases in men­tal dis­or­ders like au­tism and bi­po­lar dis­or­der,” said Crews. “It’s more than just a change in di­ag­nos­tics. The ques­tion is why? Is it be­cause we are liv­ing in a more frantic world, or be­cause we are liv­ing in a more frantic world and are re­sponding to that in a dif­fer­ent way be­cause we have been ex­posed? I fa­vor the lat­ter.”


Read the full story here.

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