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While all links worked when entries were posted to the database, different publishers
have different policies about retaining articles and providing access to archived material.
Thus some of the links, particularly older ones, may no longer be functional.
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German researchers report more evidence of another risk factor for developing type II diabetes: traffic related air pollution. After following a group of middle-aged women for 16 years, the authors find that exposure to high levels of air pollution is associated with an increased risk of type II diabetes in later years.
Women with high serum levels of a protein by-product associated with low-level inflammation or infection, were particularly prone to developing diabetes in response to pollutants. 15 July 2010. More...
Brief exposure to low levels of bisphenol A during pregnancy may contribute to diabetic symptoms in the mother and her sons - but not daughters - finds a study with mice.
BPA, which acts like estrogen and can interfere with normal hormone activity, caused changes in the mothers that resembled gestational diabetes. This study adds to a growing body of research evidence that, when taken together, suggests BPA causes health problems in animals and quite possibly in humans. 1 July 2010. More...
Two new studies - one human and one rat - show that active BPA and its inactive metabolite freely cross the placenta from a pregnant mother to the fetus.
Even more important are the chemical transformations that occur in the fetus: the active form of BPA remains active while the inactive form can be converted to the active form. Together, these studies provide evidence that prebirth exposures occur in people and may pose a bigger risk to the developing fetus than previously thought. 7 June 2010. More...
A family of common environmental contaminants, PCBs, can damage and break the important protein links between cells that line the intestine and form a protective barrier into the body.
The breaks allow the chemicals to move through the outer buffer cells and "leak" into surrounding tissues where they may cause the systemic toxic health effects associated with the compounds. 19 May 2010. More...
Exposure to very low concentrations of the plastic monomer bisphenol A (BPA) causes cellular damage and death in cultured human placenta cells, researchers report.
The doses used for this study are similar to blood levels found in pregnant women. Particularly concerning was the observation that that effects were most pronounced at the lowest - rather than the highest - concentrations of BPA. 2 February 2010. More...
Women who were fed soy-based infant formula as babies are 25 percent more likely to develop uterine fibroids than those who were breastfed or given milk-based formula.
Fibroids affect about a quarter of all women and are the leading cause of hysterectomy. This is the first study to examine whether exposure to soy estrogens early in life is associated with fibroids development later in life. 1 February 2010. More...
A new study in rats shows that persistent organic pollutants (POPs) – at levels found in farmed Atlantic salmon – cause insulin resistance and associated obesity and liver disease in the animals. The study is the first to show this experimentally.
Insulin resistance can lead to type 2 diabetes, which is becoming a global epidemic. The association between high levels of POPs in people and increased chance of developing diabetes has been known since 2006. Until now, scientists could not positively conclude that POPs influenced the onset of diabetes. 14 January 2010. More...
A new study with mice links arsenic exposure to reduced immune response.
The results suggest those people most exposed to arsenic through their drinking water may be more susceptible to illness and possibly death when infected with the H1N1 swine flu virus. 17 July 2009. More...
Women in menopause are more prone to the BPA-associated health effects of inflammation and oxidative stress than either men or women who are still menstruating, according to a study of Korean adults.
This is the first time BPA has been linked to these conditions in people and suggests older women may be more susceptible to the chemical's estrogen-like manner that drives these particular types of cell damage. Oxidative stress can be involved with aging, cancer and other disease states. 13 July 2009. More...
A new study from Harvard University has found that urine levels of BPA rise significantly when polycarbonate bottles are used for drinking water.
This is the first study to show that urinary levels of BPA are elevated after drinking cold liquids. 7 July 2009. More...
Newborn girls exposed prenatally to phthalates scored poorly on a standard behavior test – and very differently from boys. The phthalate metabolites found in the mother's urine were associated with the girls' poor performance on tests of attention and alertness.
This is the first study to link phthalates to neurological development effects in humans. Previous health studies have linked phthalates to altered genital development, obesity, diabetes risk and poor sperm quality. 8 June 2009. More...
New animal research suggests that overweight children may be at unique risk for adverse health problems due to exposure to dioxin before they are born.
Overweight mice whose mothers were exposed to dioxin during pregnancy die earlier, tend to have higher blood sugar levels and develop breasts sooner during puberty than those not exposed in the womb. Lean mice under the same circumstances had few of these effects. 21 May 2009. More...
A new study with rats shows that long-term exposure to the common agricultural pesticide atrazine causes weight gain in animals fed normal diets and obesity in those fed high fat diets.
The new results suggest a mechanism for prior studies that found an association between areas of the United States with heavy atrazine use and high obesity prevalence. 23 April 2009. More...
Lead released from a woman's bones during pregnancy can affect her developing baby's DNA in ways that can alter gene expression and possibly increase the child's lifelong susceptibility to disease.
This is the first study to show that lead can influence genetic programming in human cells, and hence, gene expression, throughout life. 21 April 2009. More...
A single, modest exposure to caffeine during early development in the womb can alter heart growth and cardiac function later in life, finds this mouse study.
The results suggest even small amounts of caffeine delivered at the wrong time during development may change the heart. Since approximately 60 percent of women say they have consumed coffee during the first month of pregnancy, understanding the consequences of prenatal caffeine exposure is important. 14 April 2009. More...
Men -- but not women -- exposed to low levels of cadmium have an increased risk of death from cancer and heart disease.
To date, excess deaths due to cancer -- lung, prostrate and renal -- and cardiovascular disease have been found in people with high and occupational exposures to cadmium. Based on data from the CDC, this is the first study to show similar results in the general population. 3 April 2009. More...
Researchers find for the first time that mice exposed to dioxin during development or while nursing have a diminished capacity to fight a flu infection later in life.
Mouse pups born to pregnant mice that were exposed to a small amount of the ubiquitous and persistent pollutants had fewer white blood cells that normally kill the flu virus and more of a different kind that increases lung inflammation. The increased inflammation can make the disease more severe and recovery more difficult. 18 March 2009. More...
Results of a study that exposed pregnant rats to nicotine levels similar to those found in the blood of women who smoke has isolated how the drug alters genes that govern fat and insulin in the offspring. The permanent changes can lead to life-threatening diseases as the animals age.
This is the first study to convincingly show that mothers who smoke, or use nicotine replacement during pregnancy, could be increasing their children's chances of developing diabetes and obesity later in life. 9 February 2009. More...
A soy protein, genistein, long known to affect fertility, can change how pregnancies start and progress in female mice treated with it as newborns.
The changes make it harder for fertilized eggs to implant and grow, possibly contributing to infertility. The effects were observed at levels comparable to those experienced by human infants feeding on soy formula. 26 January 2009. More...
In this first study examining infants’ exposure to bisphenol A, premature babies hospitalized in neonatal intensive care units had levels of BPA in their urine 10 times higher than the general population.
The source of exposure most likely was plastic medical devices used in the hospital, although some could have come from infant formula. BPA is a plastic compound that is linked to various health abnormalities in humans and lab animals. 12 January 2009. More...
The type of chemicals someone is exposed to in the womb, or soon after birth, may predetermine the risk for developing respiratory infections as an infant and allergy and asthma as an adult, according to a study that focused on PCBs and DDE.
In the study, both the amount and type of PCBs a baby was exposed to in the womb, or in the first three months after birth, affected the number of respiratory infections a child had. Some types of PCBs seemed to be associated with increased respiratory infections; other types seemed be associated with fewer infections. 5 January 2009. More...
Drinking sugary soda is linked to kidney disease, most likely due to the high fructose corn syrup that sweetens the drinks according an analysis of data from the CDC.
Underweight women were most at risk, while in men no association was seen. 2 December 2008. More...
A large new epidemiological study in Japan finds that even at background levels of exposure, people with higher levels of dioxin and dioxin-like PCBs are a significantly greater risk to metabolic syndrome, which includes high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes.
Metabolic syndrome is a very significant public health problem in the US and many other industrialized countries, including Asian nations like Japan. All of the dioxin-like chemicals measured, including dioxin itself, were linked to the disorder. Using a method to assess total exposure to this family of chemicals, they found that the people most exposed were over five times more likely to suffer from the health condition. Looking at some of the chemicals one-at-a-time, they found that some, by themselves, had an even stronger relationship, as high as 8 to 9 times more likely. 13 October 2008. More...
Americans interested in pursuing a healthy lifestyle should look closely at where they live.
This new study of New York residents finds that the nearer you live to unhealthy food stores, the more likely you are to be overweight. Lifestyle choices can lead to obesity, which is a growing epidemic in the United States. 10 October 2008. More...
Mice exposed to low levels of soy proteins before and shortly after birth were obese as adults and had reproductive changes that differed between the sexes.
The findings provide additional evidence that hormonally active compounds can act at low exposure levels and produce effects different from those caused by high exposures. 24 September 2008. More...
Some people are much more sensitive to arsenic poisoning than others. In this new study, researchers used fruit flies to discover the gene that may be responsible for these differences.
The gene they discovered produces an enzyme called glutathione synthetase which is important for detoxifying arsenic. 23 September 2008. More...
In the first prospective study exploring how fetal exposures may affect the risk of childhood obesity, scientists from Spain report that children born to mothers with higher levels of the pesticide hexachlorobenzene in cord blood were significantly more likely to be overweight and obese by the age of six.
These results add to growing evidence that fetal exposure to contaminants can interfere with hormonal mechanisms that control weight later in life, thereby contributing to the world-wide epidemic of metabolic disorder. 22 August 2008. More...
In human fat tissues, bisphenol A suppresses levels of a key hormone, adiponectin, that protects people from heart attacks and Type II diabetes.
These results implicate BPA as a potential cause of metabolic syndrome, one of the most serious and costly public health problems in the US. 18 August 2008. More...
New data link low birth weight and body mass to very low levels of commonly used chemicals found in consumer products ranging from Teflon-coated cookware to water and stain repelling textiles.
Analyzing the relationship between vital statistics of newborns born at a city hospital in Baltimore, MD--measurements such as weight, length, and head circumference-- scientists found that babies with higher levels of perfluorinated compounds in their cord blood tended to be slightly but significantly smaller than those with lower exposure. 16 August 2007. More...
Thirty-eight of the world's leading scientific experts on bisphenol A have warned policymakers of potential adverse health effects of exposure to the widespread molecule used to make plastic and food can lining.
They conclude that average levels in people are above those that cause harm to animals in laboratory experiments. And they calculate that average serum levels in people can only be explained by assuming that exposures today are already above the level that EPA considers safe. 13 August 2007. More...
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