14 DAY TRIAL // In a paper published online in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism earlier this week, a team of researchers argues that, according to evidence at hand, there is a link between pollution and medical complications that obese individuals have been documented to develop.
More precisely, the researchers say that, as shown by their investigations into the matter at hand, persistent organic pollutants appear to have a negative impact on people's health by fostering cardiometabolic complications.
As detailed on the official website for the IRCM, persistent organic pollutants, otherwise referred to as POPs, are man-made chemical compounds commonly used in agriculture, various industrial activities, and manufacturing processes.
The trouble with them is that, despite the fact that their use is currently strictly regulated on an international scale, they nonetheless constitute a threat to public health due to the fact that they are especially gifted at resisting environmental degradation.
This means that, in today's day and age, nearly everybody, including folks who live in areas where these chemical compounds have never been used, is exposed to them on a daily basis, specialists say.
“Exposure to POPs comes primarily from the environment and the consumption of food such as fatty fish, meat and milk products,” researcher Jérôme Ruzzin explains.
“One important characteristic of POPs is their lipid solubility, meaning they accumulate in the body’s fatty tissues. As their name suggests, they are also persistent so the body cannot easily eliminate them,” he further details.
In order to assess how exposure to POPs influences the overall health conditions of obese individuals, researchers carried out a study on a total of 76 volunteers. These volunteers were all women of roughly the same age, and also had a similar body mass and fat mass index.
As part of their investigations, the specialists analyzed not just the concentrations of 21 different POPs in these women's bodies, but also their cardiometabolic risk factors.
All in all, the presence of 18 different chemical compounds of said type was documented in the bodies of the 76 volunteers. Interestingly enough, the women found to suffer from various cardiometabolic complications also had fairly elevated body concentrations of 12 POPs.
“Remarkably, close to 70 per cent of the detectable POPs were significantly higher in individuals with cardiometabolic complications compared to metabolically healthy but obese subjects,” says specialist Marie-Soleil Gauthier.
The researchers theorize that differences in the degree of exposure to this class of pollutants might explain why it is that some obese individuals are metabolically healthy and others are instead more likely to develop diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
“Although this study does not show a causal link, it suggests that pollutants found abundantly in our environment could promote the development of cardiometabolic diseases like diabetes.”
“If future studies confirm this increased risk, such observations could have a significant impact on public health decisions because we will need to dramatically reduce our exposure to these pollutants,” specialist Dr. Rabasa-Lhoret stresses.