Researchers: Pollution Could Affect Unborn Children
Thu May 13, 2004 05:00 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Soot and other types of air pollution can not only affect animals and people, but their unborn children, too, researchers reported on Thursday. They found that genetic mutations known to be caused by some pollutants can be passed through sperm to baby mice. Presumably, the same thing could happen to human beings, they report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Mice that breathed polluted air from a steel mill were much more likely to father offspring with clear genetic mutations than mice that breathed filtered air, the team at McMaster University in Toronto found.
"Our study identifies airborne particulate matter as a contributor to heritable mutation induction in mice; however, a direct link between ... mutations and health effects has not yet been established," they wrote.
Article: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=5138182