14 DAY TRIAL // A new report made available to the public in this year's September issue of The FASEB Journal makes a case of how the supposedly “safe levels” of environmental pollution the majority of people are exposed to on a daily basis are more dangerous than previously assumed.
Thus, researchers warn that, on the long run, exposure to low concentrations of various pollutants can cause significant health problems.
This could be the reason why, even if they do their best to eat healthy and exercise as often as they get the chance, some people fail to notice any noteworthy improvement in their wellbeing.
By the looks of it, chemical compounds believed to be quite safe in certain concentrations turn dangerous the moment they mix with one another.
As researcher Brigitte Le Magueresse-Battistoni explains, “One pollutant could have a different effect when in mixture with other pollutants.”
To test how low doses of environmental pollutants affect health, the researchers carried out a series of experiments on mice. Thus, they fed several obese rodents a high-fat, high-sucrose enriched diet.
Whereas some of the mice only got to feast on these unhealthy foods, others were also administered a cocktail of pollutants whose dosage was supposed to be “safe.”
The rodents were exposed to these chemical compounds throughout their entire lives, from pre-conception until well into their adulthood, EurekAlert reports.
In time, said cocktail caused the female mice to become less tolerant to glucose as a result of reduced estrogen activity in their liver. Male mice, on the other hand, had trouble synthesizing and transporting cholesterol.
The outcome of these experiments supports theories that environmental pollution need be held accountable for the recorded increase in cases of diabetes, metabolic diseases and other chronic conditions.
“This report that confirms something we've known for a long time: pollution is bad for us. But, what's equally important, it shows that evaluating food contaminants and pollutants on an individual basis may be too simplistic.”
“We can see that when 'safe' levels of contaminants and pollutants act together, they have significant impact on public health,” Gerald Weissmann, M.D., argues.