From Pete Myers
Your story about “double diabetes” taunts readers with the possibility that “we might have understood it completely” (27 October, p 48) and then misses some of the most important new science on diabetes in the past two years, which suggests that environmental contaminants increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Analysis by Duk-Hee Lee and colleagues of data from the US Centers for Disease Control’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey indicates that within the general US population – excluding occupational exposure – people in the highest exposure group to a mixture of persistent organic pollutants are 38 times more likely to have type 2 diabetes.
Crozet, Virginia, US
