A study linking a pesticide in fish to diabetes adds to the growing chorus of studies suggesting that environmental contaminants may play a role in the widespread disease.
For now, common-sense precautions are everyone's best bet, Carpenter said.
“Obese people are usually obese because they eat too many animal fats, and animal fats are where these contaminants are commonly found,” he said.
Turyk added that “people should definitely follow sport fish advisories,” which warn about contaminants in waterways.
This article originally ran at Environmental Health News, a news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
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6 Comments
Add CommentIt may be that theyre toxic to the pancreas, which produces insulin Kahn added. We dont know.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy not test for a correlation between DDE and insulin resistance, which is usually the first step toward adult-onset type 2 diabetes? This would be an easy way to figure out if DDE is hurting pancreas function or if it's more of a glucose receptor issue.
Data on insulin resistance was not available for the Great Lakes charter boat captains. Insulin resistance in non-diabetics was examined in the large CDC study, called NHANES, mentioned in the story (Lee et al, Diabetes 30:628, 2007). These authors found that insulin resistance was associated with organochlorine pesticides, but not PCBs or dioxins.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is perhaps more likely that insulin resistance and other factors preceding a diagnosis of diabetes may cause abdominal obesity than the other way around.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe primary disability of the Veterans from Northeast Cape, Alaska is Diabetes and Heart Failure. NE Cape is a Super Fund Site and heavily polluted with PCB's.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf the 2,500 or so vets, diabetes is endemic. Cancer and heart attacks are common.
But, the Russians never took the station! (not that they ever wanted it).
I've just returned from St. Lawrence Island where we are studying diseases in the Siberian Yupiks who live there. They have extremely elevated levels of PCBs, and those families with hunting camps at the Northeast Cape have higher levels than those that do not. PCBs cause diabetes and heart disease. Where can I find the evidence for these diseases are elevated in Veterans who worked there?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've made a website summarizing the studies on contaminants and diabetes: www.diabetesandcontaminants.org. It focuses on type 1, but I also included studies on type 2 and gestational diabetes, since there is overlap among these diseases. And, I included studies on contaminants and insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and other pre-diabetes conditions.
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