Before explaining what endocrine disrupters(ED) are, it’s important to know first what endocrine system is. The endocrine system is consists of glands, which secret hormones, these hormones acts as chemical messengers travel through the blood to arrive at a target organ. It binds with the receptor, just like a key would fit into a lock. But there are exogenous substances in the environment (eg. Natural and synthetic hormones, dioxins, furans, DDT, PCBs or chemicals used in detergents or in the plastics industry) that mimic or inhibit the action of hormones and try to disrupt the physiologic function of endogenous hormones. Therefore this disruption might be able to cause harmful effects to human body, such as: breast, prostate, testicular cancer, urogenital malformations and reduced male fertility. With the environmental pollution becomes ever serious, the study on the environmental endocrine disrupters becomes an important task of research.
Although sounds bizarre and faraway, our life is in fact much more invaded by ED than ever as we are more industrialized. We might expose to endocrine disrupters through direct contact with pesticides or chemicals when we ingest fruits, food, or contaminated water. Many ED are persistent in the environment and can accumulate in fat, so we are more exposed to ED if we eat many fatty foods and fish from contaminated water. (Watch out scavengers!)
If it’s still not scary enough, let’s look at some shocking examples.
Diethylstilbestrol (DES), the first synthetic hormone, was massively used in the 1950s~1960s prescribed to prevent spontaneous abortion of women who were experiencing problems during pregnancy in USA, Latin America and elsewhere. Over the decades, doctors not only prescribed DES to prevent miscarriages, they also began to recommend it for untroubled pregnancies as if it were a vitamin. There were advertisements of the DES boasting that it produced bigger and stronger babies. There were also a myth about the placental barrier that this complex body of tissue that attaches to the wall of the womb and to the baby through the umbilical cord, acts as an impenetrable shield protecting the developing baby from any harmful outside influences. Nightmare came as mothers found out their babies were sooner or later detected of birth defects. Some study had also linked a rare vaginal cancer showing up in young women to the DES drug that their mothers had taken during pregnancy. Cruel reality cast down the myth of placental and the fact that some chemicals could cross the placenta and disrupt the development of the baby or have a serious long-term impact without causing any outwardly visible birth defects. In the 1960s DES was also used as a growth hormone in the beef and poultry industry that can cause cancer, however it has been halted now. (Not guarantee some countries are still using it).
Now comes to the more famous DDT. We often use it to control mosquitoes and other insects. DDT can damage the liver and reproductive system. Young roosters can be feminized when treated with DDT. It has also successfully feminized alligators in Florida’s Lake Apopka, the female ones are super female alligators with rations of estrogen to testosterone twice as high as normal. Male alligators had what looked like ovaries and stunted genitalia. Considering this animal reaction, what about the effect on humans? Many countries have a sharp rise of testicular cancer over the years, the sperm count in men has fallen almost 50%. The ubiquitous feminizing hormones in our environment bathe us in a sea of estrogenic compounds, which can also affect sexual behavior. I wonder if it's also contributing to the ever increasing homosexuality numbers.
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are a group of 209 compounds which also possess a similar feminizing capacity. Effects including demasculinization and feminization of male fish,birds,and mammals and defeminization and masculinization of female fish and birds.Some turtles are sex-reversed by PCBs, male frogs exposed to a common herbicide form multiple ovaries, pseudohermaphroditic offspring are produced by polar bears. PCBs were used in numerous products such as capacitors, flame retardants, sealants, adhesives and plasticizers.
Plus there’re more than 2000 chemicals that come into market every year without being tested to determine toxicity. Knowing more reality indeed makes people more pessimistic, even my smartest professor is a cynical person. However my professor still encouraged us, young, not yet cynical students to find some solution to this man-made disaster. Human solutions are proved to be less effective against our non-stopping industrial activity. The best and most important solution I can think of is really a God solution. The prayer before each meal is never been so necessary than knowing our inability now. So solution one: pray before you eat, that the creator of universe and everything within would make clean the food we eat, it will definitely be cleansed if our faith is big enough.. Second, buy organic food wherever possible; third avoid using pesticides in our home; four, avoid fatty food as cheese and meat. Five, avoid heating food in plastic containers. Last but not the least don’t consume chicken necks which were the sites of injection of estrogens etc.
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