Okay, so maybe you're not all that anxious to be a grandparent yet, and I can't blame you, but you'd like to think those future generations are at least possible, right? It turns out that if you're pregnant and you smoke, or if youre pregnant and you used to smoke, or if you're breastfeeding and you smoke, then the fertility of your daughter may be in jeopardy.

Damn.

It only makes sense though that not only the immediate health of our kids is at stake depending on our health through pregnancy amd breastfeeding, but also their eventual health, their long-term health. Yipes.

At least, if you're a mouse. Right now they're still drawing inferences on people based on what they're finding in mice, but what they found was this: female mice injected with "polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons" (uhh...  BAD!  SOUNDS VERY VERY BAD!!) had markedly fewer-than-normal egg follicles. Which means they had markedly fewer-than-normal chances to have baby mice.

So while I'd love to inject the female mice that used to live in the pantry of the house I used to have with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and therefore reduce the mousal population therein, I'm thinking that maybe for people it's not such a good deal.

Oh, and lest you think that "they", the amorpohous "they" that conducts such studies and weird animal research is just guessing or something when connecting mouse follicles to anything happening within the ovaries of humans, they've already covered that one. See, "the potential importance of these findings for women of child-bearing age was demonstrated by the observation that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons triggered similar molecular pathways in human ovarian tissue transplanted into immunocompromised mice." There. Cleared that RIGHT up, didn't it?

Okay, for people like me who need words with less than five syllables, I think that means that they already know that smoking is bad for pregnant women. There. Does that help? You're welcome.