That my great grandfather had (same gene). He was a French WW I vet - and his developed after losing a few toes to trench rot - and gas masks aside - chemical weapons. There was a big influx during WW I - the first war with chemical weapons as par for the course.

I tend to believe this.

I also believe that exposure to the Rainbow of Agents (orange was the tip of the iceberg) gets in your DNA.

Thanks for this - I know you are focusing on obesity - but this could have longe range impact on the children and descendants of foreign wars and military shenanigans in the 60's and 70's.

in her genes. She's in her mid 30s or maybe her early 30s. Her father is a Vietnam veteran. Her immune system is compromised and will always be that way. She gets sick often and many times ends up in the hospital. If it weren't for FEMLA she wouldn't be able to keep a job.

She has decided not to have children because of it.

All of those years of being 'sickly' - ugh!

My brother shows trace amounts of pink, blue, and orange - but we know my dad was coming home from playing "war games" from Central Amerca when my brother was very little.

I worry about him - after watching what those did to my dad when he was dying. Their organs start to melt 50 years later . . .

Mice studies alone showed links to Low Testosterone and prostate cancer in males, and early puberty and ovarian disease in women. In both genders, obesity and glucose intolerance/insulin resistance was found.

Given the wide variability of people, there are probably many more diseases that have their roots in our polluted world.

and the statement made whenever spills occur remains the same

There is no evidence that _____________ causes __________ in humans.

There was a great article in one of the environmental science journals a few years back ... unfortunately i haven't been avble to locate it but did run across this:


http://www.psmag.com/navigation/nature-and-technology/environment-becomes-heredity-4425/

This would also serve as a confounding factor for a variety of studies that haven't taken it into account when designing and analyzing studies, since it would show up in 'controls' who supposedly have no exposure to whatever it is. If true, it's going to cause a hell of a lot of studies over the years to have had data that might not really reflect the difference between the 'exposed' and the 'actually unexposed'.

(example - you do an 'exposed' group and a 'control' group you think is all 'unexposed', but many of whom might have had parents who were 'exposed'. Because you don't know to check for this, the rate of whatever it is in your extrapolated 'general population' is far higher, so your rate of whatever in your test group looks relatively lower. So you report that exposure is far more weakly related to whatever disease, because the rates of it in 'exposed' and 'control' are a lot closer together. And whatever it is thus looks 'safe' because it doesn't look to significantly increase the rate of disease from the test group to the control group.)

Do we really need something else to worry about?