HUFFINGTON
07.22.12
CHEMISTRY LESSONS
today — even without exposure to
the contaminants ourselves.
“Many behavioral diseases like
autism run in families but do not
follow normal genetic patterns,”
says Skinner. “Our findings really
fit the bill.”
Environmental insults don’t
necessarily have to alter our
genetic code to cause lasting
trouble, Skinner and other scientists have discovered. They
also can disrupt the body’s ability to interpret these inherited
instructions, and in certain
cases, this so-called epigenetic
defect is handed down and becomes more pronounced in subsequent generations.
A young soldier exposed to
Agent Orange in Vietnam, for example, or a kid caught in a drift
of DDT insect repellant on his
1950s cul-de-sac, might well pass
on health consequences to their
children, and then to their children’s children, and so on down
the family line.
Myers says that he used to
“draw solace” from the belief that
environmental contaminants such
as plasticizers and flame retardants, now likely linked to condi-
tions such as diabetes and asthma,
were not affecting any inheritable
information. In other words, if
you were to remove the exposure,
most people thought that the next
generation would be spared.
“This casts a significant shadow
of a doubt,” he said,
“on that assumption.”