-Caveat Lector-
"Because hormone-mimicking chemicals are used so widely in
agriculture and industry, restricting their use to protect public health
would threaten the financial survival of many corporations."
No one is going to find a cure for cancer so long as it's much
more profitable to manufacture products that CAUSE cancer.
WHO IS STEALING OUR FUTURE?
In 1994, industry released more than
1.1 billion pounds of toxins
linked to human reproductive disorders.
Only ONE percent of the 70,000 different
synthetic chemicals and metals in commercial use
is monitored.
Despite grave public health threats,
industry is fighting to keep polluting
and keep the public in the dark.
by Pratap Chatterjee
Covert Action Quarterly, #58, Fall 1996
Polar bears in the Arctic circle and albatrosses in the
middle of the Pacific were the last creatures that scientists
expected to be threatened by synthetic chemicals. But the
pristine wilderness and the pure ocean vastness are as extinct as
the dodo and just as much casualties of human activity. When
the albatross population suffered a 3 percent drop in
reproduction rates over the last few years, New Zealand
researchers discovered abnormally high levels of synthetic
chemicals in the birds' bodies. When polar bear reproduction
dropped by more than half, Norwegian researchers documented
levels of toxic chemicals in the animals that are 3 billion times
higher than in the cold waters near which they live.
The recently published book, Our Stolen Future, brings
together mounting scientific evidence that thousands of synthetic
chemicals in common use are accumulating all along the food chain
and are turning up everywhere from remote virgin forest to
supermarket shelf. (See p. 17.) If the authors are right, a group
of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors and hormone mimickers
are undermining the health and genetic viability of hundreds of
species, including humans. And because the implicated chemicals
including PCBs, chlorine, atrazine, DDT, and various plastics
used to manufacture five gallon water containers and
approximately half the canned goods in this country are so widely
used in agriculture and industry, the financial vitality and
survival of many corporations is also at stake. Not surprisingly,
then, in addition to calls for further investigation and
research, the storm of controversy around the new studies
implicating these chemicals has also sparked a counterattack
funded and promoted by the corporations that would be affected by
regulation or a ban.
MUGGING THE MESSENGERS
The way these chemicals work is to "mimic" or "block"
estrogen and progesterone, natural chemicals known as hormones
which instruct the body in how it should develop and reproduce.
"Hormonally active synthetic chemicals are thugs on the
biological information highway that sabotage vital communication.
They mug the messengers or impersonate them. They jam signals.
They scramble messages," write the authors of Our Stolen Future.
For example: "Imagine what would happen if somebody disrupted
communications during the construction of a large building so the
plumbers did not get the message to install the pipes in half the
bathrooms before the carpenters closed the building."
Now imagine that the chemicals that affect communications
in the endocrine system are everywhere "in the finest caviar,
in penguins in Antarctica, in the bluefin tuna served at a
sushi bar in Tokyo, in the monsoon rains that fall on Calcutta,
in the milk of a nursing mother in France, in the blubber of a
sperm whale cruising the South Pacific."
Throw in a couple more alarming facts. Billions of pounds of
these chemicals are pumped annually into the air, land, and
water, but the amount required to disrupt reproduction cycles
could be as low as one part in a trillion equivalent to just one
drop of liquid in the cars of a six-mile-long cargo train.
Humans are particularly vulnerable since the concentration
of many of these chemicals increases in animals high in the food
chain. The reason is two-fold: First, the chemicals are
"persistent," meaning they do not break down, and second, they
are stored permanently in body fat so that when a larger animal
eats smaller animals, the predator incorporates the pollutants of
its prey.
Finally, perhaps the most devastating news of all is that
some of the chemicals with weak endocrine disrupting effects
on their own become far more dangerous when two or more of them
are found together. Research conducted by two scientists from
Tulane University in Louisiana on four pesticides (chlordane,
dieldrin, endosulfan, and toxaphene) and several different kinds
of PCBs showed that two or more such chemicals in combination
could be as much as 1,600 times as powerful as the individual
chemicals alone.
CHEMICAL CATASTROPHE
In the past, scientists looking for the harmful effects of
chemical contamination have
