Environmental pollutants can attack humans at various stages of their lives and the effects can be serious and sometimes irreparable.

Generally speaking, timewise the embryo may be the first target for many pathogens which can lead to levels of embryo toxicity that can lead to miscarriages or to the birth of a child with a far from bright future. However, we know that upstream of the embryo, certain environmental poisons are able to play a genotoxic role at the expense of the germinal cells in the male and the female before the new being begins to form, by producing alterations on the genome of the father’s spermatozoa and of the mother’s ovum which are transmitted to the phenotypes of the offspring, without preventing fertilisation. In this case we may find  that the newly born child has an hereditary disability of environmental origin.

Such an individual starts life with handicap which may compromise the functions of his/her body or activities, which do not always mean being confined to a wheel-chair and depending on being accompanied by other able-bodied and willing persons.

This CD reviews some of the polluting agents that can be commonly found in working and living environments, which have been reported in scientific and  biomedical literature as being clastogenic for male and/or female germinal cells.

The chart highlights how these disease-causing pollutants are linked to primary or secondary production processes. Then, before any other consideration, as is always the case in environmental disease, it should be pointed out that for all these agents we should be prepared for synergistic and potentiation effects which are illustrated by the so-called cocktail.

Another important aspect is that hereditary disability is not the only form that weakens permanently and irreversibly the human being’s physical and intellectual efficiency. This concept is illustrated by the fact that humans can undergo a grave debilitation even when, although being able to walk, they are affected by other serious forms of environmental disease, which occur in a later stage of their life. Examples of such are: an impaired kidney that requires constant dialysis or a transplant,  cirrhosis of the liver which means the individual has to be put on a waiting list for a transplant, life-endangering heart disease  that requires a heart transplant, nervous disease that is the cause of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. For all these cases too,  one can imagine an environmental cause.