DDT Exposure In Womb May Cause Obesity

"It's not just what you eat and how much you exercise that can pack on the pounds. What your mother consumed during her pregnancy may also add to your own waistline later in life.

A new study found that pregnant women who ate the most DDT-contaminated fish while pregnant in the 1970s had daughters that carried as much as 20 extra pounds three decades later. The study adds to growing evidence that chemicals in the environment can affect body weight and that conditions in the womb can have health effects in adulthood.

"The things that mothers are exposed to and that circulate in their blood while babies are in utero really do make a difference a long time later," said Janet Osuch, an epidemiologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing. "Obesity researchers have not looked at this at all."

In the early 1970s, the Michigan Department of Community Health began monitoring people who live along the shores of Lake Michigan. Industrial dumping in the lake, starting in the 1920s, has led to high levels of contaminants in the water, particularly of PCBs and DDE (the major breakdown product of the pesticide DDT).

Over the years, periodic blood testing of Michigan residents helped confirm that people who ate lots of sport-caught fish from the lake harbored large burdens of PCBs and DDE in their bodies. These chemicals tend to magnify in fatty tissues as they move up the food chain. And they have been linked to all sorts of negative health problems."

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Discovery News