"Manufacturers are producing new chemicals all the time with little government oversight," says Julia Brody, director of the Silent Spring Institute, based in Newton, Mass. "We need tighter restrictions, like those in Europe, if we hope to protect the next generation."(note that Europe is far from great and that the UK in particular has been pushing back on tighter EU-wide regulations).
In 2002, a study found that 1 in 6 U.S. women of reproductive age has enough of mercury contaminant in her blood to endanger a developing fetus.
Some compounds can linger for decades after a single exposure. Take DDT, a pesticide that can damage the nervous system. In May 2006, the Seattle-based Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition tested Washington residents and found 80 percent had detectible levels of the chemical in their bloodstreams 34 years after it was banned in the United States.
"There is extensive evidence of harm in animals and growing evidence of harm in humans," says Frederick vom Saal, a professor of biology at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
They say pollutants may be partly responsible for the rising incidence of breast cancer, up 90 percent in 50 years and triggered in lab studies by organochlorine pesticides, mercury, PAH (found in auto emissions) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC, found in plastics).
Other health problems that researchers say may be linked to environmental toxins include male infertility, which has increased twelvefold in the past 80 years; prostate cancer, up 75 percent in 30 years; diabetes, which has doubled in the past 25 years; and obesity, which has doubled in the past 15 years.
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Prozac in earthworms, and other synthetic aberrations in wildlife; in
Female Trouble for Wildlife Raise Human Worries
In California, female sea lions are spontaneously aborting their fetuses. In the Great Lakes area, mother gulls are sharing nests and raising eggs together because their male partners have forgotten how to parent. In upstate New York, female frogs have as much testosterone in their bodies as males. Scientists say these aberrations all share a common link: exposure to toxic chemicals called "endocrine disruptors," which pollute the air, soil and water.
In Washington state, endocrine disruptors have been tied to the deaths of mother orcas, whose orphans have been adopted by other female whales. In Alaska, they have caused female polar bears' ovaries to shrink. In Massachusetts, they have lowered the over-winter survival rates of female tree swallows. In Florida, they have accumulated in the milk of mother dolphins, poisoning and killing their calves.
Synthetic compounds have been detected in even the simplest life forms. According to a 2006 study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), earthworms now have an average 31 pollutants in their bodies, including perfumes, household disinfectants and the antidepressant Prozac.
Just as alarming as these problems is the low level of exposure at which they are occurring. When Tyrone Hayes, an assistant professor of biology at the University of California, Berkeley, studied the endocrine-disrupting properties of atrazine, a common weed killer, he discovered reproductive abnormalities in affected leopard frogs at 0.1 parts per billion parts water, 30 times less than the Environmental Protection Agency's limit for atrazine in drinking water.
Consider phthalates, those chemicals that help prevent makeup from smudging. In 2003, an Environmental Protection Agency study found these substances could reduce fertility in rodents, causing female rats to bear 50 to 90 percent fewer offspring.
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Breast cancer rates down, mostly in women over 50, may be due to millions discontinuing hormone therapy replacement
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You may be interested in the "skin deep" report and database by the Environmental Working Group on safer cosmetics and care products (there is standard for 'natural' labels in the US).
Think you don't use cosmetics? what about toothpaste, shampoo, and so on... check it out.
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