The data and research studies we’ll look at in this post offer evidence that many, many millions of people today who are suffering from obesity may have a problem that, for those with a specific kind of family history of smoking, is totally independent of their diet or other behavior. In other words they aren’t eating or doing anything that can completely explain their obesity, but they are suffering, getting sick and dying of it. They may not be able or choose to eat the best diet, and they may not be able to live in the healthiest environment, but do those factors explain what’s causing their obesity enough that we can say “case closed”?
The newest research (shown and linked-to below) says the case is far from closed. It is linked to hidden endocrine disrupting pesticides including heavy DDT in the tobacco products smoked by women in the 1955-1980 time period. And by the way, knowing that pesticide damage may have been done to your mother or grandmother by constant DDT exposure, and that you were exposed before and maybe after birth, may lead your doctors today toward thinking about new ways of helping you.
So this post and these ideas aren’t just about raining awareness of the terrible things that smoking did to mothers and grandmothers of today’s generations, it’s about how knowing what was done generations ago may, in these new days of genetic science, give us new options to repair the damage.
To begin with, we have a study that shows us, although that was not the researcher’s objective, that people suffering from obesity today had mothers or grandmothers who were exposed. Not exposed by smoking – nobody knew that or even admits it today. But because as we’ll see shortly cigarettes were loaded with DDT in the period 1955-1980, people struggling with obesity today may well be the victims of DDT in the cigarettes their mother or grandmother smoked in 1970. DDT is now classified along with a number other supertoxic pesticides as an Obesogen – a chemical compound that causes obesity with the right exposure. It was a hidden but heavy contaminant of the tobacco product supply in those days, along with other supertoxic organochlorines including Endrin, Aldrin, Dieldren, Heptachlor, and Chordane.
This means that that people born to mothers who smoked 1955-1980, or to mothers whose own mother smoked 1955-1980, are at higher risk of transgenerational obesity just from that factor, exposure to DDT in the womb, even without any further exposure. In utero DDT exposure at just the wrong point in the unfolding tissues of the fetus, causes specific DNA damage that extends well beyond obesity in the later life of the unborn child to include multiple kidney, prostate, testicular and ovarian diseases and several specific cancers including breast cancer and childhood leukemia.
Here is a data table from a confidential internal RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company that shows the levels of DDT contamination of their three most popular brands. Virtually any woman smoking an RJ Reynolds brand in those years, and earlier, was inhaling DDT at these levels. If she was pregnant, her child was exposed at precisely the right point to initiate the obesogenic process because even if she didn’t smoke every day of her pregnancy DDT lingers and accumulates in organs and fatty tissues. Her babies would have been exposed, and the transgenerational process initiated.
RJR Confidential June 21, 1972
Project 2358 – Cigarette Development; Notebook Pages: 250701-250719
| In The Cigarette | DDT – Range PPM (20 samples) | DDT – Avg PPM (20 Samples) |
| 4841 – Regular Unfiltered | 4.14 – 7.96 | 6.06 +/- 0.99 |
| 4842 – Filter King | 3.38 – 6.65 | 4.95 +/- 0.90 |
| 4843 – Filter King | 4.86 – 6.82 | 5.89 +/- 0.61 |
| In The Cigarette Smoke | ||
| 4841 – Regular Unfiltered | 0.35 – 0.57 | 0.42 +/- 0.06 |
| 4842 – Filter King | 0.16 – 0.35 | 0.025 +/- 0.05 |
| 4843 – Filter King | 0.24 – 0.46 | 0.35 +/- 0.05 |
I hope that this information can empower people suffering from obesity or any of the other diseases now associated with transgenerational effects of DDT exposure to seek alternative treatments and therapies that may help in ways not being addressed by Western Allopathic medicine as represented by the US FDA, which actively rejects responsibility for regulating pesticide contamination of tobacco products. FDA simply refuses to so so, and there can only be one reason for that. Only one.
BMC Medicine 2013 11:228
Background
Ancestral environmental exposures to a variety of environmental factors and toxicants have been shown to promote the epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of adult onset disease. The present work examined the potential transgenerational actions of the insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) on obesity and associated disease.
Conclusions
Observations indicate ancestral exposure to DDT can promote obesity and associated disease transgenerationally. The etiology of disease such as obesity may be in part due to environmentally induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance.
Here is direct evidence that smokers of at least brands of RJR cigarettes were exposed to DDT with each puff they took before, during and after pregnancy. I have a copy of the original report found in the Tobacco settlement files. Here are the important data.
RJR Confidential June 21, 1972
Project 2358 – Cigarette Development
Notebook Pages: 250701-250719
| In Cigarette | DDT – Range PPM (20 samples) | DDT – Avg PPM (20 Samples) |
| 4841 – Regular Unfiltered | 4.14 – 7.96 | 6.06 +/- 0.99 |
| 4842 – Filter King | 3.38 – 6.65 | 4.95 +/- 0.90 |
| 4843 – Filter King | 4.86 – 6.82 | 5.89 +/- 0.61 |
| In Cigarette Smoke | ||
| 4841 – Regular Unfiltered | 0.35 – 0.57 | 0.42 +/- 0.06 |
| 4842 – Filter King | 0.16 – 0.35 | 0.025 +/- 0.05 |
| 4843 – Filter King | 0.24 – 0.46 | 0.35 +/- 0.05 |
This level of contamination was universal in 1972, and included many other organochlorines that RJR didn’t test for – at least not in this report. But tobacco products in those days were heavily contaminated with the whole range of OC pesticides including Endrin, Aldrin, Dieldrin, Chlordane, and many others whose impact on human health have never been studied.
This also means that people who themselves smoke or use DDT contaminated tobacco products today are reinforcing the transgenerational effects of DDT exposure by their mother or grandmother. It’s also important to say that the tobacco products with the highest levels of DDT today are those being smoked by poor, marginalized Hispanic, African American and Native American youth.
Obesity is one of the known effects of current DDT exposure, so as long as this synergistic pathway goes unrecognized in our understanding of obesity the opportunities for successful healing will be unnecessarily limited. A good first step would be to remove all tobacco products contaminated by high levels of DDT from the market.
This study of transgenerational effects of exposure to DDT ought to provoke questions about what the tobacco manufacturers knew in 1972, or earlier, or afterwards about organochlorine pesticides in their products.
