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Chemicals in the Environment

Posted By mike On June 28, 2009 @ 8:54 am In News, Connect the Dots, Small Foot Print | 1 Comment

Endocrine disruptors are streaming through our industrialized way of life and are accumulating in the environment creating change that maybe we don’t need.

I think amphibians were among the first class of animals that were devastated by the changes in environment and they led the way in the mass extinction that is taking place today.  Maybe the life spent in water, where the chemical pollution of the industrial revolution accumulates accounts for the early impact.

So, do we need to worry about what the frog’s eye tells the frog’s brain?  Do frogs have a right to exist on a small blue planet?

Hat tip to Nicholas Kristoff and the NYT.

[1] clipped from [2] www.nytimes.com


It’s Time to Learn From Frogs
Some of the first eerie signs of a potential health catastrophe came as bizarre deformities in water animals, often in their sexual organs.
In the Potomac watershed near Washington, male smallmouth bass have rapidly transformed into “intersex fish” that display female characteristics. This was discovered only in 2003, but [3] the latest survey found that more than 80 percent of the male smallmouth bass in the Potomac are producing eggs.
Now scientists are connecting the dots with evidence of increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys. For example, up to 7 percent of boys are now born with undescended testicles, although this often self-corrects over time. And up to 1 percent of boys in the United States are now born with hypospadias, in which the urethra exits the penis improperly, such as at the base rather than the tip.This month, the Endocrine Society, an organization of scientists specializing in this field, issued a landmark 50-page statement. It should be a wake-up call.

“We present the evidence that endocrine disruptors have effects on male and female reproduction, breast development and cancer, prostate cancer, neuroendocrinology, thyroid, metabolism and obesity, and cardiovascular endocrinology,” [4] the society declared.

“The rise in the incidence in obesity,” it added, “matches the rise in the use and distribution of industrial chemicals that may be playing a role in generation of obesity.”

  [5] blog it

Article printed from Small Blue Planet: http://smallblueplanet.org

URL to article: http://smallblueplanet.org/2009/06/28/chemicals-in-the-environment/

URLs in this post:
[1] Image: http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/
[2] www.nytimes.com: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/opinion/28kristof.html?_r=1&th&emc=th#
[3] the latest survey found: http://www.fws.gov/chesapeakebay/pdf/endocrine.pdf
[4] the society declared: http://edrv.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/30/4/293
[5] Image: http://clipmarks.com/share/6B25EAA6-171E-4341-8532-C68B673806BB/blog/

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