Your environmen
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/
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.
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
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment