Endocrine Disruptors in the Environment 14
An anonymous reader writes "The World Wildlife Fund has recently published a document calling for action to be taken to reduce chemicals that are considered endocrine disruptors from being used. The background for this comes from a World Health Organization report.
Here is the public notice from the WHO.
Endocrine Disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the normal functions of the endocrine system and have been linked to lower sperm counts, prostate cancer, breast cancer, weird sexual deformations in some animal species, etc. I had heard one of my teachers talking about this issue back in the early 90's. Seems like people have been aware of this kind of thing for a while. What have you heard about this issue? Where does it rank (if at all) with reference to the political or medical interest/attention it is getting in your area? Will enough people become aware of it to actually make a difference in preventing the use of these chemicals?"
A Lack of Awareness (Score:3, Insightful)
Teachers are always up to date on these sorts of things as one of their duties is to inform students of the goings-on in the world. The problem is that outside of the schools, this issue gets very little publicity. In fact, Slashdot is the first place I've seen an article about it on. None of the papers in Ottawa seem to have covered it, at least not in the front page/world news area where it should be.
Currently, the political and media interest/attention lies in infighting in the Liberal party (which holds a majority in Canadian parliament), Israel-Palestine and on the US-led war on terrorism. Environmental issues seem to get no coverage. For that reason, unless more media coverage is devoted to this, I'm afraid that it be solved as without awareness, there is nothing we can really do...
Re:A Lack of Awareness (Score:1)
The World Wildlife Fund can't be considered apolitical or scientific. The UN WHO is, by definition, political. Even so, all the headline on their web page says is "A new publication released today that further research is needed".
Estrogenic chemicals. (Score:4, Informative)
Sometimes the chemicals cause the activate the receptor prematurely, sometimes they block the receptor on the target cells from activating properly. Since receptors for a hormone are also on the cells that create the hormone, this can cause regular hormone production to be distrupted.
Since estrogen is related in structure to many other reproductive hormones (including 'male' hormones), estrogenic hormones have been blamed for everything from miscarriages (pregnancy is strongly dependent on the levels of estorgen/progesterone) to male fertility (spermatogenesis is dependent on testosterone, a steroid similar in structure to estorgen), to male baldness.
It turns out that so many chemicals in the environment exhibit 'estrogenic properties' it's hard to study the effects of each, short of having a labrotory of "bubble rats".
But endocrinology is especially vexing because so many of them work in tandem. Hormone Foo alone causes X to happen, Hormone Bar causes Y alone to happen. Hormone Foo + Bar causes not only X and Y to happen, but it also causes Z to happen. Now imagine every other possible scenario of Foo Bar and Baz and their impacts on X, Y, Z and the rest of the alphabet.
Endocrinology is inter- and intracellural communication -- the 'networking' among cells -- and is "the next big thing" in biology. It is critical in the understanding of fertility, development, cancer -- you name it...
Sperm Count? (Score:2, Funny)
I get e-mails every day about how I can improve my sex drive.
Re:the sky is falling! the sky is falling! (Score:2, Funny)
Amen to that. Sure, there are plenty of real environmental threats that need to dealt with... but anything the WWF burps out is likely to be pure propaganda. An hour alone with this book [amazon.com] convinced me of that...
Re:the sky is falling! the sky is falling! (Score:1)
Coffee? (Score:2)
It's not just environmental... (Score:4, Informative)
it's in your food as well. If we are going to worry about endocrine disruption, then does it not make sense to start with looking at what we eat? The biggest problem is with soya (a.k.a. soy or soybeans). You could be ingesting this every day at levels that are known to have serious endocrine-disrupting effects, and not even realise it.
The problem with soya is that it contains large quantities of various 'phytoestrogens', or plant oestrogens, and in particular the compunds diadzein and genistein. These belong to a family of compounds known as isoflavonoids, many of which share an oestrogen-like effect. Isoflavonoids are a mixed bag: perhaps you may have heard of their anti-cancer properties. However, what you perhaps haven't heard is that they are only effective against certain types of tumour, in particular testosterone-dependent tumours, such as most prostate and testicular cancers. This is, of course, consistent with their oestrogenic (which implies anti-testosterone) properties. However, some tumours (such as some breast, and most ovarian cancers) are oestrogen-dependent, and isoflavonoids can actually aggravate such tumours. The evidence for the efficacy of isoflavonoid treatment of non-hormone-dependent cancers is shaky, at best.
Perhaps you might be concerned about the effect it has on sex and reproduction - according to a Swiss study, 100g of soya material contains isoflavonoids with approximately equivalent oestrogenic effects to a single combined (oestrogen and progesterone-containing) contraceptive pill. This level of oestrogenic compounds is well known to cause feminization of males, infertility and loss of sex drive. In the very rare cases where women who were taking the combined contraceptive pill become pregnant, a termination is almost always advised due to the effects the external oestrogenic hormones have on the developing foetus, which can include developmental abnormalities through to miscarriage.
If you're a woman, and not planning to get pregnant, this is not such a problem, and postmenopausal women may find soya useful to help guard against osteoporosis and other postmenopausal symptoms. But is it made clear that soya is much less helpful for men than women, or can even be detrimental, or that it can be dangerous for women trying to get pregnant? No.
Use of soya is on the increase. In the US, soybean consumption rose from 23.54 million metric tonnes in 1975 to 43.28 million metric tonnes in 2000. [unitedsoybean.org] It is used for all sorts of things, from animal feed to cooking oil, and is increasingly used as a bulk protein and carbohydrate in many processed foods. Soya is also the number one source for lecithin, used widely as an emulsifier. Take a look at the ingredients list on some of the food in your refrigerator and cupboards: you might be surprised how much contains soya. Thanks to various loopholes in food labelling regulations, soya is also sometimes present in foods which do not have it labelled. In the EU, for instance, if an ingredient makes up less than 25% of a foodstuff, then there is no legal requirement for that ingredient to be labelled.
Unfortunately this makes it extremely difficult to know exactly how much soya and soya-derived products you are actually ingesting. Traditionally, it has been accepted that East Asian countries consume much more soya in their diets than anywhere in the West: it is, after all, a traditional food there. This, in turn, has been used as evidence that soya use in the West is at safe levels. However, with the increase of soya use in processed food, and inadequate labelling regulations, is this really true any more?
This also doesn't include people that consciously make an effort to eat soya: vegetarians, vegans, people who believe in its health-giving properties, people who drink soya milk as an animal milk substitute, and many more. If you consume more than three glasses of soya milk each day, then you are already consuming more soya isoflavonoids than the average Japanese man. If you eat a fairly standard portion of soy protein (100g) every day then you are ingesting many times that, and are without doubt disrupting your endocrine system in quite a major way.
In all fairness, in moderation, soya is probably as harmless as any other common foodstuff. East Asian peoples have been eating moderate quantities of soya for millenia with no obvious ill effect. However, with the creeping addition of soya into everyday foods, and the encouragement of people to eat soya as a major part of their diet, I believe that many people have already passed the level of consumption that could be called 'moderate'.
The soya industry has talked up the health benefits of soya without giving any regard to the downsides. This is, I suppose, inevitable. This is big business - 56% of US oilseed production is soya, and agriculture has pretty dismal regulation. Unfortunately, the supposed 'health-food' industry has bought into the propaganda lock, stock and barrel, and parrot that propaganda endlessly. It neatly coincides with their own financial interests as the primary supplier of soya foods. To say this has made me cynical about the claims of an industry that supposedly puts the health of consumers first is, to put it mildly, an understatement.
Re:It's not just environmental... (Score:2)
Of course you are overlooking the minor point that the majority of soy grown in the United States these days is *genetically modified* with unknown consequences.