WEBVTT

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[sil.]

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What if this baby is already
irreversibly programmed

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to be a fat 40-year-old? What if something
is happening to our children prenatally,

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that is programming all of us to
be heavier than we should be?

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What if, over generations, we are actually
altering our species\' ability to stay slim,

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no matter how hard we try.

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Scientists studying obesity
have begun to suspect

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that there is something more at play here
than just calories in and calories out.

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There are chemical agents that we encounter
which can change our body response to calories.

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If you give low doses, you
do end up with fat mice.

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New evidence suggests
that what\'s making us fat

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is not just modern lifestyles
but also modern chemicals.

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[music]

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Other side.

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Three, two and let\'s go single.

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We\'re exercising and we\'re dieting

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with great determination. We even
joined support groups to lose weight.

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Thirty-nine. You\'re down two inches
in your waist. That\'s great.

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But still in the western world,
every second adult is overweight.

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One in six people is obese.

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Obesity rates have almost
doubled over the last 30 years

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and it\'s not just in
gluttonous North America.

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It\'s happening in every country
with a western lifestyle.

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By the year 2000,

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the world\'s obesity experts we\'re
puzzling over a startling trend.

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Newborn babies from 1950 on
were becoming fatter each year.

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It wasn\'t like they we\'re
eating too much junk food

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or not exercising enough. Even other animal
species living in proximity to humans

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have grown fatter.

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We just simply cannot
account for a 50% change

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in obesity rates based on just
energy intake and lack of exercise.

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What else was happening?

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By 1999, scientists working independently
on a variety of reproductive studies

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began stumbling upon the same surprising
side effect in their lab animals,

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fat.

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This would propel on to a new path
and the only footprints ahead

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belong to a woman in a small Scottish town.

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This is calendar on the
edge of the highlands.

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[music]

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Paula Baillie-Hamilton lives just outside
of town with her husband and four children.

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She is an Oxford-trained doctor
specializing in metabolism.

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In 1998, she began a unique

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and personal research project.

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After I gave birth to my second child, I couldn\'t lose weight and I
started to wear my husband\'s clothes and his jeans and things like

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that but when I tried different things, nothing
seemed to work. Come. (inaudible) come.

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Most people at this stage
would hit the gym.

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Baillie-Hamilton hit the books.

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I read an article one evening and it was about how
chemicals in the environment are affecting our wildlife

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at current levels and that these
chemicals act like fake female hormones.

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The article was about reproductive
problems, but Baillie-Hamilton wondered

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if there could be a link between these synthetic
chemicals and her inability to lose weight.

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I mean, to me, it was
staggering because there was I…

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a top academic, a medical doctor,
just got a PhD from Oxford University

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and I had never heard of these
chemicals in our environment

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and the fact that they cause hormonal
problem was just incredible.

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I rushed to my library and I
pulled out a big text book

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and looked it up and female hormones,
do they affect our bodyweight,

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can they cause weight gain and
obesity and there it was.

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So that was the beginning
of many years, three years

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of… of pretty intensive research.

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While Baillie-Hamilton combed through
scientific studies on environmental chemicals,

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searching for any mention of weight change,

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on the other side of the Atlantic, a researcher
in North Carolina studying a synthetic estrogen

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was approached by the people
who took care of her lab mice.

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They told me that we had to
rewrite our animal protocol

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because the mice were too big for the
cages that we had them housed in.

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Retha Newbold was studying reproductive changes
caused by an estrogen replacement drug called DES,

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but her hormone-primed mice had become fat.

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I wasn\'t paying attention
to body mass, body fat.

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I was only really focusing
on the reproductive tract

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but I knew at that point I had… I had
to deal with it. Around the same time,

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a California biologist who was
studying the effects on sea life

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of a marine pesticide called tributyltin.

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It was first used widely as an
antifouling agent in paints

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to prevent marine invertebrates from
growing on the bottom of ship holes(ph).

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Bruce Blumberg discovered that tributyltin
could trigger the growth of fat cells.

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That was in a Petri dish.
Then he moved on to frogs.

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We tested tributyltin on
frogs its sensitive times

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and development and we found out to our surprise
that the testes were converted into fat cells.

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The pesticide had somehow turned

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a part of the reproductive
system into fat cells.

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[music]

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Also, in the 1990s at the University of
Missouri, endocrinologists, Fred Vom Saal

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was studying a chemical called bisphenol A.

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So for BPA, does anybody know how the
number of 50 micrograms per kilogram

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per day was arrived at? Vom
Saal was a contentious figure

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in the world of industrial chemicals.
Industry toxicologists were skeptical

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that he could trigger reproductive problems
in lab mice with small doses of bisphenol A,

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doses that were thousands of times
smaller than what those toxicologists

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considered safe and then as a
side effect in one 1998 study,

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Vom Saal noticed that bisphenol A,
seemed to be making his mice fat.

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We treated pregnant females

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with a 2 microgram per kilogram dose
and when the animals got to puberty,

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the bisphenol A, animals
were significantly heavier

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than the animals that had not been treated.

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More fat lab animals, three
separate scientists,

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three separate studies, three
accidental findings of fat.

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On the surface, very odd, since they\'re
all studying different chemicals

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but the chemicals do have
one thing in common.

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All three can disrupt the system of glands
that release hormones into our blood stream.

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It\'s called the endocrine system and
it controls how we reproduce and grow.

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So manmade chemicals that upset this
system are called endocrine disruptors.

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These endocrine disruptors fool receptors

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into thinking they\'re natural hormones.

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The scientists with the fat lab animals were all
exploring links to cancers and reproductive problems.

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In Scotland, Paula Baillie-Hamilton
was looking for something else,

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weight gain.

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I had to kind of work out what chemicals were out
there, find academic papers that they were on,

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and then do research and
then I had to (inaudible)

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enough papers to actually find the kind of the
paper I wanted actually showed each chemical,

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that group of chemicals weight gain effect and
those were just fabulous… it was fabulous.

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She saw that researchers were concerned about weight
loss in their papers on environmental toxins.

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If they found weight gain, they often
wouldn\'t feature this in their conclusions.

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After all, weight loss
was a sign of toxicity.

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Weight gain was seen as a good thing.
Some studies even apologized for finding

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that the chemical that they
could have gave to the animals

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caused a weight gain effect because they
said we tried to get a weight loss effect,

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so some type of toxicity which the weight loss but we only got weight gain. So they
didn\'t really… they got the results, but they didn\'t understand what they were getting.

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It was like a eureka moment,

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every time I found a new group of chemicals that
caused weight gain effect either in humans, animals,

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it was just mind-blowing.

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[music]

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In 2002, Baillie-Hamilton published a review in the
magazine, Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

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It was called Chemical Toxins,

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A Hypothesis to Explain the
Global Obesity Epidemic

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and Baillie-Hamilton\'s amateur sleuthing was
about to get noticed by the professionals.

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Jerry Heindel was Retha
Newbold\'s boss at the

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US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
and he had already heard about her overweight mice.

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There was this huge by
90 days… or… or three

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or months they were two or three
times the weight of normal animals

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but I didn\'t really think too
much of it at that time.

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Article came out by
Baillie-Hamilton and she discussed

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the idea or she proposed
the idea that it was

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exposure to environmental chemicals
that actually was causing…

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uh… or playing a role in the obesity epidemic.
She proposed the chemical toxin hypothesis

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and we said, \"Oh, my goodness, that fits.\"

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Baillie-Hamilton was not
a research scientist

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and her review appeared in an alternative
medicine journal, a journal that receives

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little respect from mainstream
research scientists. Still,

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Retha Newbold was curious and began designing a study
to find out exactly how her mice were getting fat.

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Heindel referenced Baillie-Hamilton
in one of his articles.

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In California,

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Bruce Blumberg came across the reference,
read Baillie-Hamilton\'s review,

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and remembered his frogs with
the unusual fat deposits.

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Blumberg wondered if something is
reprogramming lab animals before birth,

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what\'s happening to humans? What we\'re going
to be talking about is the labor tool box

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as I like to call it. In the 21st
century, most couples are well

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aware of chemical threats
to a healthy pregnancy.

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I want to keep windows open and stay away from anything cleaners or gas
stations, you know, stay away from people who are smoking cigarettes.

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Well, I was trying to eat as
much vegetables as possible

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and wash them really well. So whatever
you feel is right for you, all right…

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Although they\'re probably
not familiar with the name,

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these women are referring to a new
area of research called fetal origins.

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The idea is that some adult human diseases can
actually get their start before birth in the fetus.

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Dr. John Challis is one of the world\'s
leading experts in fetal origins.

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We recognize that small changes
within the normal birth weight range

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can have enormous implications
as predisposing factors

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towards the development
of disease in later life.

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The theory says subtle effects on the
fetus that cause low birth weight

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can also lead to disease.

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The initial work, of course, was around cardiovascular
disease, heart disease and the recognition

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that low birth weight was associated with the recognition that
low birth weight was associated with increased blood pressure,

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increased incidence of stroke, increased incidence of death
from heart disease, and then an increased incidence of obesity,

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of type 2 diabetes. Any questions
about breathing at all?

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The fetal origins theory
suggests that underweight babies

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can result in overweight adults.

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[music]

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Through his early work, Bruce Blumberg was familiar with the fetal
origins theory and the effect chemicals can have on development.

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At about the time my wife
was pregnant in 1996,

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was when I started working
on endocrine disruptors

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so we we\'re very careful from that point
forward to eat as well as we could.

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My daughter, much of what she eats is organic.
We try to do the best job that we can.

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Of course, she can\'t eliminate exposure
to chemicals. They are everywhere.

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Blumberg had already stumbled

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upon the fat-inducing qualities
of a pesticide in frogs,

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now he wanted to see if he could
duplicate the results in an animal

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genetically closer to humans, the mouse.

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Blumberg\'s team fed pregnant
mice with small amounts

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of tributyltin and then he waited.

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If the mice produced fat offspring,
should we be worried for human babies?

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[music]

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At the bellybutton, okay 39.
You\'ve lost a lot inches.

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I was a chubby kid, a chubby teenager, chubby
adult, so I\'ve always been struggling with it.

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I\'ve always been on diets
from I was a teenager.

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I\'ve traditionally lost
may be 10 - 20 pounds

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but eventually it all comes back on again.

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Nobody wants to be fat. I\'ll get off now?

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And being fat can make us sick. The link
between obesity and diabetes is well known.

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What\'s new is the possible
link to chemicals.

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We don\'t know which chemicals
might cause obesity

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and which ones might only cause diabetes
and which ones might cause both

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because they\'re really
related in a lot of ways.

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Twenty years ago, there were some 30
million people worldwide with diabetes,

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now there are 250 million.

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Being fat can cause cancer as well.

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In the fattest country in the world, the
United States, 14% of cancers in men

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and 20% in women are estimated
to be caused by being too heavy.

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In the upper chest… But for most of us, the
first thing we think about is entire health

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but how we look in the mirror…

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There is tremendous
pressure against being fat.

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No one likes to look at themselves in the mirror with
blubber hanging everywhere and no kid wants to be fat.

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So they\'re becoming fat despite efforts to the
contrary and the question is, why is that?

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By 2003, Blumberg and a handful of
other scientists had begun to suspect

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that one culprit might be
endocrine disrupting chemicals.

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Blumberg had fed pregnant
mice with tributyltin.

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If the offspring were overweight,
he wondered if each fat cell

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would be fatter or if there
would be more fat cells.

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The number of fat cells in
everyone\'s body is programmed

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by the end of puberty. It can be changed
up but not down as far as we know.

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The number of fat cells we
have is called our set point.

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As an adult, you mostly gain

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or lose weight by increasing or
decreasing the fat stored in the cells.

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Before puberty, it is possible to
increase the number of fat cells

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with a bad diet and once you\'ve increased that number of
fat cells you\'ve changed the set point for fat cells,

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your body will maintain that.
And 11.5 on the left.

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So once you\'ve passed puberty, it seems as though
nothing can change the number of fat cells you have.

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We can make the cells smaller or larger

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but it looks like we
can\'t change the number.

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One endocrine disrupting chemical that may
be changing our set point is bisphenol A,

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also called BPA. It\'s a component
in many plastic products.

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The Canadian government along
with the European Union,

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has banned BPA from baby bottles
and Health Canada has declared

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it a toxic substance.

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But BPA is still found
in many household items.

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Throughout her eight months of pregnancy,
Laura Gamble has avoided foods and chemicals

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that might harm her baby so
she was shocked to learn

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that BPA is even in the lining of cans.
It is not something I was really aware.

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It\'s pretty scary especially if it\'s
things that you can\'t really avoid…

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Like the coating of store receipts.
Five hundred micrograms

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of bisphenol A is able to be
wiped off a person\'s hand

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after just holding a receipt.

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Although it lasts in the body for
six hours, at any given moment,

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there is a tiny amount of bisphenol A in the
blood stream of 90% of North Americans.

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It\'s the highest volume chemicals

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produced with these kind of
endocrine disrupting activities.

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In his initial studies, Vom
Saal gave mice a BPA dose

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equivalent to the amount a person
is likely to ingest in daily life,

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two micrograms per kilogram of weight
per day. Prior to these studies,

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the lowest dose was 50,000
micrograms per kilogram

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of weight per day. We\'re scaring the
heck out of the regulatory community

00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
because they use that 50,000
dose to set a safe dose

00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
way above what we were testing.

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
Both Vom Saal and Blumberg are concerned
about what they see as a critical flaw

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
in traditional toxicology.
Toxicologists are trained

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
to take a chemical and you test it on animals at
some dose which would kill most of the animals.

00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
And then you lower the dose, and you look for a dose that
only kills half the animals that\'s the so-called LD50,

00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
the lethal dose 50, and you keep
reducing the dose more and more and more

00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
until you find a dose where you don\'t kill any of the animals
and perhaps we don\'t have any observable effect at all.

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
To be extra safe, industry cuts this
strength again up to 1,000 times

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
before marketing the chemical.
Their process works top-down.

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
We came at this as endocrinologists,

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
starting at the bottom and
working up to the dose

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
that caused an effect and were
tens of thousands of times below

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
where anybody in toxicology
had ever been before.

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
But still, how could extremely
tiny amounts of a chemical

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
trigger health problems like obesity and
diabetes when much larger amounts did not.

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
This was like saying. \"If you\'re
given one drop of the poison

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
it may kill you but if you\'re
given 10 drops, you\'ll be fine.\"

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
It made no sense but it made
sense to Blumberg Vom Saal

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
and other endocrinologists.

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
A few molecules of formalin
in very, very low doses

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
binding to it\'s receptor stimulates
the cell to make more of them

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
and become more sensitive to the hormone.
As you increase the concentration,

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
at some time you\'ll reach saturation where
you cannot elicit any more response

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
because you\'ve used all the available
receptors. However, at roughly 50% saturation,

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
genes that would make more
receptors are turned off

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
and other genes that inhibit the response
are turned on. And without those response

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
mediators, these docking sites,
the hormones can\'t do anything

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
so the response goes away.

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
So it seemed like tiny amounts of certain
chemicals could affect the endocrine system

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
of lab animals when larger amounts did not.

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
But the chemical industry wasn\'t buying it.
They commissioned their own studies

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
but couldn\'t reproduce these adverse
effects in low dose experiments.

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
These low dose animal studies
are very difficult to get right

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
so health agencies weren\'t
sure who is to believe

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
and since potentially toxic chemicals
can\'t be directly tested on humans,

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
the agencies were stuck waiting
for human population studies

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
that match chemicals in
the blood with disease.

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
These studies can take many years. In
Scotland, although Baillie-Hamilton

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
wasn\'t worrying about scientific
protocol, the same year her review

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
of the scientific literature came out.
She had already authored two books,

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
warning of the fattening effects of endocrine disrupting
chemicals. what I wanted to do was to put everything together

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
in a well-researched, well-referenced book

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
that the ordinary person
who is not an academic,

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
uh… could actually read, understand,
and then try and help themselves.

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
In her books, Baillie-Hamilton
advocated cleansing the body

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
and home of many common chemicals. But she
was jumping way ahead of the science.

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
It would be another year
before Vom Saal would

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
add weight gain to his list of
the suspected effects of BPA.

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
It wouldn\'t be until two years later

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
in 2004, that Newbold got results
from her obesity of estrogen

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
treated mice. By puberty
they were all overweight.

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
All of the ones that I tested that did
cause the animals to be light at birth.

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
Yeah, they all ended up being
obese but when I went back

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
and I looked at animals that
were the same weight at birth

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
and I could do that by varying my doses. So even
the animals that were the same weight at birth

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
those turned out be heavier later on.

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
And by 2005, Blumberg had
results from his animal study.

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
The animals had more fat at birth and
they became fatter later in life.

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
These are mice that have
access to normal exercise.

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
They eat the same amount of the same types
of food as their unexposed relatives

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
and these mice get 10% to
15% fatter at adulthood.

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
Blumberg\'s study conclusions
were strong enough

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
that he decided chemicals like tributyltin deserved
a name of their own and the name says it all,

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
Obesogens.

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
Until that point in time,
everyone knew, every doctor knew,

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
my doctor certainly knew that you get fat by eating too much
and there is nothing else to it. What we showed with this

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
work was that there are chemical agents that we encounter
which can change our body response to calories.

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
But are tiny amounts of these obesogens

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
really affecting entire human populations?
The only way to find out

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
is to measure entire human populations. Those
studies involving hundreds of thousands

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
of people worldwide are underway right now.

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
In the meantime, lab scientists
are casting an ever-widening net

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
looking for problem chemicals and
one researcher is tracking down

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
the fattening qualities of a
very common natural substance.

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
[music]

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
Is it plausible that these
chemicals are causing obesity?

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
Absolutely. Because it had
been shown unequivocally?

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
No. Alison Holloway is
on her way to Montreal

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
for a meeting of Canada\'s leading toxicologists.
They\'ll talk about how environmental chemicals

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
introduced in the womb can
lead to disease in later life.

00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
Holloway is looking specifically at
endocrine disruptors and obesity,

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
only the chemical she is
studying isn\'t synthetic.

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
And I know a lot of people that I know who smoked
they said, you know, \"I didn\'t want to smoke

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
while I was pregnant (inaudible) and I felt sick,\" and then
when the baby was born they were like back once again. So…

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
Holloway\'s endocrine disrupting
chemical is nicotine.

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
When I started working in this area which is around 2004, the
(inaudible) epidemiologic studies that suggested kids born

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
to moms that smoked had an
increased risk of becoming obese.

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
Even though it\'s common knowledge that smoking
during pregnancy leads to underweight newborns,

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
the Fetal Origins Theory suggests that because
of the phenomenon of catch-up growth,

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
those children might grow
up to be overweight.

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
If maternal smoking is associated with reduced birth weight, then it should
also be associated with an increased risk of hypertension, diabetes,

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
and obesity postnatally.
At McMaster\'s University,

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
Holloway has been running tests on rats.
We use 1 milligram per kilogram bodyweight

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
per day injections of nicotine.
So that yields levels of cotinine

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
which is the major metabolite of nicotine in the serum
of the rat which is consistent with moderate smokers.

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
We see heavier rats and it\'s
consistent among other labs

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
that are using nicotine as well.

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
We\'ve generated data that suggests
that nicotine acts directly

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
on the beta cell that is the insulin
secreting cell in the pancreas.

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
And that\'s disrupting the endocrine system.
If the obesogen hypothesis holds,

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
it\'s possible nicotine is
among the culprit chemicals.

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
There are about 20 chemicals
suspected of being obesogens.

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
They can be in hundreds of everyday
products from electronics, casings,

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
and dental glues to cleaners and
weed killers, from magazine covers

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
and hair care products to
carpets and coffee pots.

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
Hi, Tina. Hi, how are you? I\'m good. These
chemicals are being measured in the body fluids

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
of volunteers and their children in
large study groups around the world.

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
(inaudible) have you had any mercury,
silver, dental fillings replaced? No.

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
Researchers then follow the health
of the participants over many years.

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
This is the only safe way to
discover the effects on humans.

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
Have you ever been exposed to cold products
from hot asphalt or tar roofing material? No.

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
Two thousand women like Tina
Yakabuchi have volunteered

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
for a Canadian study on environmental chemicals
and their possible effects on newborn children.

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
Fresh oil-based paint? No.

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
As much as I try in my normal life to not expose
myself to environmental toxins, I feel that

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
there is still some exposure that have no control
of that I wanted to find out if I was exposed.

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
[sil.]

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
Right now, the study is only following
children to six months of age

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
but the study\'s directors are hoping if it
can be extended to at least six years of age

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
to measure the effect of
obesogens on their weight gain.

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
And even bigger study of obesogens
has started across the Atlantic.

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
[music]

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
I didn\'t know anything about the obesity issue and the link
with chemicals when Dianna was born so that was four years ago.

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
Juliette Legler is raising
two children in Appledoorn,

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
an hour from Amsterdam.

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
[music]

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
Legler moved to the Netherlands
from Canada when she was 17

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
and is now heading up OBELIX, a
study of the obesogen hypothesis

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
spread across 7 institutions
in 4 countries.

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
It was launched by the European
Union because they too were seeing

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
a considerable increase in overweight
people in virtually every EU country.

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
OBELIX will carry out not just
cellular studies and animal studies

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
but also studies of four human populations

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
and it will use the new
field of epigenetics

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
to study the effects of
chemicals on human development.

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
Epigenetics describes how identical
genes in different people

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
can be expressed in different ways.

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
Our DNA is not being mutated by these chemicals
but the way that DNA is being expressed,

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
the proteins that are being
formed during development

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
are changing due to exposure
to these chemicals.

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
Chemicals may be instructing
specific genes especially

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
during the rapid development happening in the womb
to express themselves in a slightly fatter way

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
and that effect could carry on
generation after generation.

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
Juliette Legler\'s team will
investigate that possibility

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
using her own favorite model
organism, the zebra fish.

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
I think they are an excellent
model for early life development.

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
A lot of the genes that are involved
in differentiation of cells

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
and organs during development are the
same between a human and the fish.

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
If you expose a little fish
embryo very early in life,

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
you can see changes in the way the fish
accumulates lipids from the yolk sac.

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
In other words,

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
you can make a fish fatter with chemicals.

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
The four human populations involved in the
OBELIX study are in Slovakia, Belgium,

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
the Netherlands, and Norway.

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
Norwegians have long been known
for their healthy lifestyles

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
but now 46% of Norwegians
adults are overweight.

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
I remember very well the first
time I saw a really fat person

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
that was when my father took me to New York and
we were going off in the Empire State Building

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
and there was this huge person.

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
I had never dreamt that a human
being could become that fat.

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
But now you can see fat people everywhere.

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
Merete Eggesbo is a
Norwegian epidemiologist

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
and part of the OBELIX team. She is looking
at the effects of chemicals on human growth

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
and development beyond birth.
Eggesbo is measuring

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
the amount of environmental chemicals in breast
milk then watching for any abnormal growth

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
in the children who received that milk.

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
She is looking especially for dioxins
which are suspected obesogens.

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
Dioxins are long living and are
carried in the fat of fish.

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
Norwegians eat a lot of fish and
dioxins can end up in breast milk.

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
While measuring dioxins you really need to…

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
to have a lot of milk because they are in very, very low
concentrations so we ask the mother to turn in a milliliter of milk.

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
[sil.]

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
This is one of 170 freezers
filled with breast milk.

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
Eggesbo is hoping to have 3,000
mother-child pairings in her study group.

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
[sil.]

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
One of the mother-child pairs in the study

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
is Eggsbo\'s sister, (inaudible)
and her son Sondra.

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
It doesn\'t really demand a lot of us. We just
have questionnaires that we have to answer.

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
Sondra and other kids in the study

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
will have their weight measured
until they\'re 12 years old.

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
[music]

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
Eggesbo herself has three children and
the youngest still lives at home.

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
I learned about environmental chemicals
a year after she had been born.

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
Now I think there are many things
I would have them differently.

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
We have all these chemicals
in use in the EU,

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
more than 100,000 chemicals and they are not
checked whether they do damage to the child,

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
developmental damage, neuropsychological
damage, it\'s not tested.

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
It\'s only to a certain
extent carcinogenic issues

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
but not where they damage our children
and… and babies which amazes me.

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
The results of the OBELIX project
will give Merete Eggesbo

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
a much better idea of whether
Norwegians are growing fatter

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
through no fault of their own.
I think we always

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
had an oversimplified view on obesity. It looks
to me as if it\'s a much more complex issue

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
than calories in and calories out. But
the experts are quick to point out

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
that undoubtedly a big part of the
obesity problem is this society

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
that eats too much and
doesn\'t exercise enough.

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
Everybody, I think, will recognize the fact

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
that diet and exercise are playing a role
in obesity and in developing diabetes.

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
There is no doubt in my mind
that these are two key issues

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
that hasn\'t changed. What has changed

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
is that perhaps environmental chemicals
are playing a role in this also.

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
They are playing a role that is
superimposed on top of diet and exercise.

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
Now you lift the shoulder right,
right up to bra line. Eight…

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
Yes, exercise and diet still matter,

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
perhaps even more.

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
Some studies show that the animals given both,
a high-fat diet and a low dose of an obesogen

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
will get fatter and more
diabetic than animals on either

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
just the high-fat diet or just
the obesogen. In other words,

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
chemicals could multiply
the effects of a bad diet.

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
A fundamental part of the role
of chemicals in impacting

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
these diseases is that they\'re
still interacting with everything

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
else in the person\'s lifestyle.

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
And Blumberg suspects there may be other
ways chemicals affect us in adulthood

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
as well as during development. Our
existing fat cells maybe programmed

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
to fill up more than usual and
the chemicals could delay

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
the feeling of fullness while eating.

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
The control of appetite and satiety
in mammals is under hormonal control

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
and it\'s certainly possible in principle that
a chemical could make us more or less hungry.

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
After eight years of gradually accumulating
evidence on the existence of obesogens,

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
Jerry Hiendel has invited the leading experts to North
Carolina for the first ever international meeting.

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
Juliette Legler has flown in from the
Netherlands. Retha Newbold is here.

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
Allison Holoway has arrived from Hamilton

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
and Bruce Blumberg arrives
with a new concern.

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
He thinks he has found another obesogen,

00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
one that\'s very widely used.

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
[music]

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
About 200 government and university
experts on diabetes, obesity,

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
endocrinology and toxicology
have gathered in North Carolina.

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
Their task, to focus obesogen research on
to the most urgently needed experiments.

00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
One undercurrent of concern here

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
is about industries\' preferred
replacement for BPA.

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
Because people want BPA-free products,

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
they\'re using bisphenol S
as replacement for BPA

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
and the problem is BPS and BPA
are both estrogenic chemicals

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
and there is no reason to
think that bisphenol S

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
is going to be a lot safer than BPA.

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
And Blumberg is investigating yet another

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
possible obesogen in common use.

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
This chemical is used quite widely in food
packaging and in other industrial processes.

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
We know that it makes stem cells and the fat cells,
we don\'t know the pathway through which it acts.

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
But to avoid testing for the problems in
chemicals after they\'ve been marketed.

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
Blumberg is helping develop
a certification process

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
for new industrial chemicals.

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
And science agencies are developing a
revolutionary new testing protocol using robots

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
that can analyze thousands of
chemical reactions each day.

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
New chemicals can be quickly tested
early on at a wide range of doses.

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
So you and endocrine disrupting chemicals

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
would never make it into
our everyday lives.

00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
But in the meantime, what are
the most important precautions?

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
What we\'re telling you
is if you\'re pregnant

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
to pay more attention to your
nutrition and chemical exposures

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
so that the next generation will not go
through the same thing as this generation

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
and then maybe we will be able
to stop the obesity epidemic.

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
Hello. How are you? Tina
Yakubuchi from the Canadian

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
study has had her baby.

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
So she adds breast milk to the sample she provides
for a wide range of environmental chemicals.

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
There are already 20 suspected obesogens.

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
There may be more.

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
The goal would be to measure 30 or 40,
50 chemicals that we know are in us

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
and try to figure out which ones would
be associated with weight gain.

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
But mom, the nose is wet. The nose is wet.
Well, that\'s sign of a healthy dog.

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
Baillie-Hamilton has had two more children
since that postpartum chubby period

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
that launched our investigation
into environmental chemicals.

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
It could take ages for all the scientific studies
to show yes, definitely this causes that,

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
that causes that and the other. But people what gonna
with these things now? AKT 2 is the one in liver and fat.

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
Many scientists believe it is time to
apply the precautionary principle.

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
The most extreme application
precautionary principle

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
would be that all chemicals are guilty until
proven innocent. We actually do the opposite,

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
which is there is a minimal testing
that\'s done, mostly toxicological testing

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
and then chemicals are allowed in the
environment and they\'re allowed to stay until

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
we prove beyond any reasonable doubt that they are
harmful. If we have to wait for human evidence,

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
we have failed. What we\'re doing

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
with these developmental exposures
is that we are programming people

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
so that they will develop obesity
later on in life and that\'s something

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
that\'s going to be passed
on to future generations.

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
I think we have to really be concerned.
Our focus is on prevention.

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:20.000
[music]