Chemicals Can Affect Unborn Babies, Too

The excellent Nicholas Kristof has another, yes, excellent piece in yesterday's New York Times. He has written quite a bit about concern about human exposure to chemicals before, from the ones suspected to have links to obesity and behavioral issues to the ones turning boy fish into girl fish—and doing similar hormonal gymnastics in our own bodies.

His concern, which I share, is the reason we have developed the No More Dirty Looks series at GOOD (well that and because it's fun to tell people what's really in their toothpaste, and to share homemade beauty product recipes) and it's why Alexandra and I wrote the book of the same name. As Kristof always points out, there's too much we don't know about the effects of our chemical exposure, and what we do know is deeply unsettling.

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Now he is saying that as much as we worry ourselves silly about what happens to babies once they're in this big burning world, there's also growing concern about what happens before they're even born.

Some people think we're shaped primarily by genes. Others believe that the environment we grow up in is most important. But now evidence is mounting that a third factor is also critical: our uterine environment before we're even born.

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He ends the piece on a tough note saying "we have learned that a uterus is not a diving bell that insulates its occupant from the world’s perils. ... And it’s now high time to take a closer look at unregulated chemicals that envelop us — and may be shaping our progeny for decades to come."

You can read the whole thing here.

Image via Fanaticook