By Dr. Mercola

It can no longer be denied that environmental chemicals are having a significant impact on human health, and that impact even starts while you’re still in the womb.
New research has revealed that exposure while in the womb to DDT, a pesticide banned in 1972 after close to 30 years of use, increases women’s risk of high blood pressure decades later.

In Utero DDT Exposure More Than Triples High Blood Pressure Risk

Like many environmental toxins, DDT passes freely through the placenta during pregnancy, where it gains direct access to the developing fetus. Past studies have linked DDT to high blood pressure, decreased fertility, premature delivery and diabetes in adults, but this is the first study to reveal its health risks when exposure occurs prenatally.
The research revealed that women exposed to the most DDT before birth were 2.5 to 3.6 times more likely to develop high blood pressure before the age of 50 than those with the lowest prenatal exposure.1
Although DDT has been banned in the US for decades, it still persists in the environment, including in the food chain. And that is just one chemical that babies are exposed to before birth …
When the Environmental Working Group (EWG) tested blood samples from newborns, they found an average of 200 toxins,2 including:

180 that cause cancer in humans or animals
217 that are toxic to your brain and nervous system
208 that cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests

“The dangers of pre- or post-natal exposure to this complex mixture of carcinogens, developmental toxins and neurotoxins have never been studied,” EWG wrote, but as the featured study revealed, we may now be seeing a rise in human health problems that began during the most crucial stages of early development.

Babies are Especially Vulnerable to Toxic Exposures

No one knows what happens when a developing fetus or young child is exposed