Hormone Disruptors

The white plastic lining that many steel cans now have, may contain Bisphenol A which has been shown in laboratory tests to be a hormone disruptor.

A mother heats her babys formula up in a microwave, in a microwave safe plastic bottle. The heating releases phthalate plastisicers contained in the polycarbonate plastic. Phthalates have been found to be hormone disruptors

Apples and oranges are likely to have been treated with Endosulphan, an organochlorine pesticide. This is a hormone disruptor.

The effects on animals have been drastic, ranging from infertility and birth deformities, to gender bending i.e. females acting like males and vice versa, along with compromised immune systems leaving them more open to infections and cancers. The main focus of hormone disruptors seem to be the sex hormones, testosterone and oestrogen.

Animal studies

Beginning in the 1950s, bizarre and puzzling problems began to surface in different parts of the world. Many of the disturbing wildlife reports involved defective sexual organs and behavioural abnormalities, impaired fertility, the loss of young, or sudden disappearance of entire animal populations.

Michael Fry, a wildlife toxicologist at the University of California had investigated how the pesticide DDT and other synthetic chemicals disrupt the sexual development of birds after hearing reports of nests with female pairs in western gull colonies in southern California.

Reports in scientific literature indicated that a number of synthetic chemicals, including DDT could somehow act like the female hormone oestrogen. Researchers have shown that exposing male birds to oestrogen during development affects the brain as well as the reproductive tract and permanently suppresses sexual behaviour.

The same chemicals keep coming up in relation to these abnormalities, pesticides DDT, dieldrin, chlordane and lindane, as well as PCBs. These chemicals show up in the blood and body fat of the animals and humans and in particularly shocking levels in human breast milk. These persistent chemicals concentrate in the tissues and accumulate exponentially as they move from animal to animal in the food chain. The levels in a top level predator can be 25 million times greater than those at the bottom, and its our offspring that are being affected.

The hand me down poisons found in the fat of the wildlife all have one thing in common: one way or another they all act on the endocrine system, which regulates the bodies vital internal processes and guides the critical phases of prenatal development. They disrupt hormones.

Effects in Humans

Over the years Neil Skakkaback, a reproductive researcher at the University of Copenhagen, had seen more and more sperm abnormalities, as well as a drop in the typical sperm count. At the same time, the rate of testicular cancer had tripled in Denmark between 1940s and 1980s. Skakkeback also noticed low sperm counts and unusual cells in the testes of men who eventually developed this type of cancer. He reviewed 61 studies from USA, Europe, India, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brazil, Libya, Peru and Scandinavia. According to the data, average male sperm counts had dropped by almost 50% between 1938 and 1990. a the same time the incidence of testicular cancer had jumped sharply. Genital abnormalities such as undescended testes and shortened urinary tracts are rising among young boys.

Human studies investigating the effects of exposure to synthetic chemicals have focused largely on cancer in exposed adults. Only a handful looked at the possible effects on the children of exposed individuals, such as one which studied the children of women who had eaten fish regularly from the Great Lakes in USA. The study found evidence that the mothers level of chemical contamination affected her babies development. The children of mothers who had eaten 2 or 3 meals a month of fish were born sooner, weighed less and had smaller heads than those whose mothers had not eaten fish. Moreover the greater the amount of PCB’s, a common pollutant in the great lakes fish, in the umbilical cord blood, the more poorly the child scored on tests assessing neurological development.

The reality

The first real world experience of the generational effects of hormone disruptors involved DES (diethylstilbestrol) a synthetic oestrogen given to women from the 1940s until the early seventies, to prevent miscarriage. This drug caused increased rates of vaginal cancer, deformities of the uterus, abnormal pregnancies and immune problems in the daughters born to women who took the drug. Both sons and daughters had reduced fertility.

So hormone disruptors have subtle and delayed effects. These include behavioural changes such as attention and intelligence responses, reproductive tract abnormalities, skewed hormonal balance, altered immune response, infertility, and tumours in reproductive organs.

There does appear to be reduced fertility in humans and breast and testicular cancer has risen dramatically in western countries. ADD and learning difficulties also appear to be rapidly increasing.

The British Medical Journal 1992 paper on 61 studies from 20 countries found that the average sperm count had dropped 45 percent in fifty years to 1990

The percentage of men whose low sperm counts made them functionally infertile had tripled from 6 to 18%.

Prevention

High risk: couples attempting pregnancy, pregnant women, breastfeeding women, young babies and children.

Lowest risk: males and females past reproductive age or not intending to have children.

Follow the overall concept of

ensuring purity of water intake,

choosing and storing food intelligently and

avoiding unnecessary use and exposure to synthetic chemicals

The information presented on this site is presented as a information guide and reference only, and is not intended as a substitute for competent advice and guidance by a qualified practitioner.

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