Mothers, be wary of exposing your male children to lead - especially when they're still growing in your womb. A study conducted by Professor Donald Fox of the University of Houston recently uncovered a link between obesity and lead exposure in mice.

What Professor Fox did was to expose pregnant mice to varying levels of lead in the rodents drinking water in order to observe the effects of the exposure in the mice's offspring. The result according to Fox:

These animals were slower, less coordinated and fatter at a year old. Mice exposed to 10 micrograms – the CDC standard for acceptable exposure – gained about 25 percent more weight than their control counterparts. A 1-year-old male mouse is the equivalent of a 30- to 40-year-old man.