Are chemicals in everyday products making us "girly girls"?

Rivers of Doubt

Minute quantities of everyday contaminants in our drinking supply could add up to big trouble.

By: Anne Underwood, Newsweek, June 4, 2007

The common white sucker is nobody's favorite fish. It's a bottom feeder that trout fishermen in Colorado happily toss back into the water. But it's also what scientists call a sentinel—a species whose health (or lack thereof) can warn us about problems in the environment. So imagine the reaction of environmental endocrinologist David O. Norris of the University of Colorado when he discovered some alarming changes in the sucker population of Boulder Creek. Upstream, where the water flows pure and clear out of the Rocky Mountains, the ratio of males to females is 50-50, just as nature intended. Downstream, below the wastewater-treatment plant in Boulder, the females outnumber the males by 5 to 1. Even more worrisome, Norris found that about 10 percent of the fish were neither clearly male nor female, but had sexual characteristics of both. "On the one hand, we were excited [to make such a dramatic finding]," says Norris. "At the same time, we were appalled."

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The emerging compounds of greatest concern to most scientists are the "endocrine disrupters." These are chemicals in the environment that mimic hormones when they get into the body. An astonishing array of chemicals fall into this category—not only natural and synthetic hormones, but also chemicals in certain cosmetics, shampoos, shaving lotions, skin creams, dishwashing liquids, pesticides, flame retardants, plastics and antibacterial soaps. Like actual hormones, "they have effects at exceedingly low levels," says Herb Buxton, coordinator of the Toxic Substances Hydrology Program at the USGS. Because so many of them bind to a certain type of receptor in the body—whether for estrogens, androgens or thyroid hormones—the effects add up.

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Scientists wonder if endocrine disrupters in the water are partially responsible for some well-documented trends, including earlier puberty in girls and reduced sperm counts in men. In fish, sperm problems have been linked to waterborne contaminants, including phthalates [Wikipedia], which are used in many plastics, cosmetics, skin-care products and pesticides.

(The article is here. What the FDA says about phthalates here. What the chemical industry says about phthalates here and here. The latest news on phthalates here.)