Professor Hunt is cautioning us about our continuing exposure on a daily basis to a host of substances that are quite possibly causing us great harm. Of course with a regulatory industry that operates with a revolving door to the food and chemical industries that it is supposed to protect us from, the chance of getting proper study and regulation for these chemical poisons is pretty bleak. Later on the companies can throw their hands up in the air and say that they didn't know or that it was a failure of the government to properly regulate them.
"Scientists have become increasingly worried that even extremely low levels of some environmental contaminants may have significant damaging effects on our bodies—and that fetuses are particularly vulnerable to such assaults. Some of the chemicals that are all around us have the ability to interfere with our endocrine systems, which regulate the hormones that control our weight, our biorhythms and our reproduction. Synthetic hormones are used clinically to prevent pregnancy, control insulin levels in diabetics, compensate for a deficient thyroid gland and alleviate menopausal symptoms. You wouldn’t think of taking these drugs without a prescription, but we unwittingly do something similar every day.
An increasing number of clinicians and scientists are becoming convinced that these chemical exposures contribute to obesity, endometriosis, diabetes, autism, allergies, cancer and other diseases. Laboratory studies—mainly in mice but sometimes in human subjects—have demonstrated that low levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals induce subtle changes in the developing fetus that have profound health effects in adulthood and even on subsequent generations. The chemicals an expecting mother takes into her body during the course of a typical day may affect her children and her grandchildren."
