Watching TV this week, I see someone thinks that maybe the pcb problem needs more investigating even though a lot of research has suggested pcb is dangerous. Most baby bottles no longer contain it; but is it still in canned goods as a lining? Time to get concerned is now--ok it's probably too late. But more $ for research? It that a stalling game? Here's a book summary I did for Genesee County Master Gardener Newsletter, April 2008.
Recently the book OUR STOLEN FUTURE Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival?—a Scientific Detective Story was mentioned a class offered at ForMar. I finally found the book at the UM Flint Library (ISBN/0-525-93982-2 by Colborn, Dumanoski, and Myers, 1996) and found it informative, seemingly well researched, fairly balanced, but unquestionably troubling. Sometimes called a sequel to Rachel Carson’s SILENT SPRING, the book starts with background information on the burgeoning worldwide use of pesticides and chemicals. The book strives to present a summary of research about “man-made chemicals disrupting delicate hormone systems”….which “play a critical role in processes ranging from human sexual development to behavior, intelligence, and the functioning of the immune system”. (p.vi)
The book starts with the “Omens” chapter going back to 1939 to Charles Broley’s study of Florida’s bald eagles and his concern that up to 1947 the eagle population was healthy and growing. Then birth rates decreased and the mating and nesting habits changed. By about 1955, Broley began to think that 80% of the eagles in Florida were sterile. The chapter explores other researchers and events they encountered: 1950s England’s disappearing otter population, reproductive problems with mink in the Great Lakes region in the 1960s, the die out of the herring gulls in Canada, the 1970s female western gulls nesting with other females in California, in the 1980s alligator eggs hatching at only 18% in Florida’s Lake Apopha linked to the startling fact that about 60% of the male alligators there had abnormally small penises and the 1988 Northern Europe seal die-off, frightening data in Demark that suggested human sperm count had dropped by nearly 50% from 1938 to 1990 and that testicular cancer was increasing.
Chapter 2 discusses the beginnings of bringing everything together as scientists began to think beyond cancer-causing chemicals to something more insidious—hormone disruption. The poisons from chemicals and pesticides “all act on the endocrine system, which regulates the body’s vital internal processes and guides critical phases and prenatal development. The hand-me down poisons disrupted hormones”. (28) In following chapters, not easy reading, the authors discuss what can happen when the chemical messages in embryos are blocked—male and female characteristics may be altered. The DES problem and its implications are summarized and the disturbing fact that “substances and doses tolerated readily by adults can devastate the unborn.” (50)
Chapter 5, “Fifty Ways to Lose Your Fertility” portrays DES as an estrogen mimic and Vinclozolin, used to “kill fruit fungus as a testosterone message blocker perhaps creating an ambiguous or hermaphrodite state”. (83) Although having little structured resemblance to natural estrogen, DES and DDT are able to trick the human body to make it disrupt the body’s chemical messengers. This chapter is quite unsettling to read but the ideas it presents need to be discussed, disseminated and evaluated. The chapter presents a fictional account of the journey of PCBs beginning in the South to Canada, out West up to the Great Lakes, through the St. Lawrence to the Sargasso Sea and up to Greenland where the nonfiction reality is that “Canadian health studies have shown that the people of Broughton Island (Intuits) have the highest levels of PCBs found in any human population except those contaminated in industrial accidents”. (108) The Inuit’s diet is mostly wild fish and game—the PCBs have worked up the food chain to humans.
PCBs were introduced in 1929 when engineers created 209 chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls—PCB. Swann Chemical which became part of Monsanto put them to seemingly good use in transformers, as “lubricants, hydraulic fluids, cutting oils, and liquid seals”. (89) “They made wood and plastics nonflammable. They preserved and protected rubber. They made stucco weatherproof. They became ingredients in paints, varnished, inks, and pesticides”. (90) (An aside here: we had an oozing transformer right by our driveway a few years ago creating an orangish blob on the flowers and grapes below. It was replaced but is the soil there safe?) And carbonless copy paper used by all of us from 1957 to 1971 as we typed without the messy carbon paper put the PCBs literally at our fingertips. An alarming piece of information from p. 89 is that “of the 51 synthetic chemicals that have been identified as hormone disruptors, at least half including PCBs, are ‘persistent’ products in that they resist natural processes of decay that render them harmless. These long-lived chemicals will be a legacy and a continuing hazard to the unborn for years, decades, or in the case of some PCBs, several centuries.” Three decades ago researchers “discovered that DDT, PCBs, and other persistent were accumulating in human body fat and breast milk, as well as in every other part of the environment”. (106) What actions has the health care system, government or we taken about this disturbing fact?
Chapter 6, “A Single Hit”, discusses the creation of dioxin. It is released by volcanoes and forest fires but also created when chlorine-containing chemicals such as pesticides are manufactured, by bleaching paper with chlorine, incinerating plastic and paper trash, and burning fossil fuels. (See p. 113) It is everywhere. Agent Orange had been contaminated with dioxins which are linked to soft tissue sarcoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and Hodgkin’s disease. (114) The chapter explores the evidence that in some animals dioxin seems to interfere “with the sexual differentiation of the brain”. (119)
Check chapter 10, “Altered Destinies” for information on estrogen mimics (PCBs), DES, declining sperm counts, increasing prostate and breast cancer numbers, PCBs effects on thyroid hormones, etc. “Defending Ourselves” offers some obvious actions we can take; many of us already have. Read the sections Know Your Water; Choose Your Food Intelligently (local is better), Avoid Unnecessary Uses and Exposure, and Improving Protection which has a thoughtful list of ideas that should and could be implemented to provide protection from chemicals that interfere with hormones. Also read “Flying Blind” where the development of CFCs, chlorofluorocarbons, in 1928 is discussed. In 1972, their effects on the environment and our earth’s ozone layer were questioned, but we are still debating their hazards today. Something MUST be done and we must be more demanding in our community, state and nation; it is imperative that even at this late date, some forceful action must be taken to eliminate this health catastrophe.
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