Is Industrial Pollution Making America Fat?
Despite the nagging of diet experts, fitness instructors, public health officials, doctors, nurses and moms, the tide of obesity that has practically engulfed Western civilization over the past two decades shows no sign of reaching its ebb. In the United States, the percentage of adults who are obese – defined by the National Institutes of Health as a body-mass index exceeding 30 – has doubled since 1990, climbing from 12 percent to a whopping 24 percent in 2005, closely tracking Oregon figures, according to the Oregon Health Division. For the most part, the blame for the obesity epidemic has fallen on diet and exercise, with particular emphasis on familiar evils such as the proliferation of junk food, the advent of the remote control, trans fat, ever-longer commutes and even the disappearance of physical education in schools. But now some researchers have identified a new suspect: pollution. Attributing obesity to diet and exercise is “practically scientific dogma at this point,” says
