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Sewage Altering Fish, Study Reports
Male bottom-dwellers
with female sex characteristics are found near outfall pipes in
waters off Los Angeles and Orange counties
Male fish with female
characteristics have been discovered in ocean waters off Los
Angeles and Orange counties, raising concerns that treated
sewage released offshore contains hormone-disrupting compounds
that are deforming the sex organs of marine life.
Scientists around the world have found sexual abnormalities in
frogs, fish, alligators and other wild animals exposed to sewage
effluent and industrial contaminants that mimic estrogens and
other hormones. But the latest research in the waters off
Southern California is among the first to find such effects in
ocean creatures.
Toxin in plastics harming unborn boys, Scientists say chemicals
have gender bending effect
"Researchers have long known that
high levels of substances called phthalates have gender-bending
effects on male animals, making them more feminine and leading
to poor sperm quality and infertility. The new study suggests
that even normal levels of phthalates, which are ubiquitous, can
disrupt the development of male babies' reproductive organs."
"Tests showed that women with higher levels of four different
phthalates were more likely to have baby boys with a range of
conditions, from smaller penises and undescended testicles to a
shorter perineum, the distance between the genitals and the
anus. The differences, say the authors, indicate a feminisation
of the boys similar to that seen in animals exposed to the
chemicals. "
See also
278)
Endocrine disruption
and potential human health implications
Low-level exposures to endocrine-disrupting chemicals
are ubiquitous in today ’s environment.Persistent chemicals
such as DDT,PCBs and dioxins are detectable in nearly 100%of
human blood samples,and even some of the shorter-lived
potential endocrine disruptors are frequently detected in
general population surveys of residues in blood or urine
More than 50 dangerous pesticides found in British food
official tests
reveal. All have been found to be poisonous or are suspected
of causing cancer or having "gender bender" effects by
international regulatory bodies. Alert as gender bending sewage alters lambs’ sex
NEW warnings that
a tiny amount of pollution can alter the gender of sheep
have sparked fears that it could also affect human
health
Scientists at the
government’s Macaulay Land Use Research Institute in
Aberdeen have discovered that male lambs exposed to
low-level environmental contamination start behaving like
females
Can Prenatal Hormone ExposureInfluence
Gender-IdentityDevelopment? -- One Theory
If xenobiotics
can blur the distinctions between the sexes in seagulls and
alligators at nanogram levels, how far-fetched is it to
speculate that the ,same pollutants may be affecting humans
in the same fashion?"
Estrogen can bend gender of male fish living in water
contaminated by birth-control pill residue
For three years,
Canadian scientists have put birth-control pills into a remote
Ontario lake to measure this impact. The results: All male fish
in the lake - from tiny tadpoles to large trout - were
"feminized," meaning they had egg proteins growing abnormally in
their bodies
Kidd seeded the lake
with 5 nanograms of EE2 for every liter of water, a level
roughly equivalent to a typical U.S. urban waterway, said Larry
Barber, a USGS geochemist who studied the prevalence of estrogen
in 70 U.S. rivers, lakes and streams. In Barber's study, four
U.S. sites - in Florida, New York state, Massachusetts and
Montana - had EE2 levels many times higher than in Kidd's lake.
The Florida site, near Moriczville, had 273 nanograms per liter,
according to Barber's study.
Our Stolen Future
Our Stolen Future
explores the scientific discovery of endocrine disruption. The
investigation begins with wildlife, as it was in animals that
the first hints of widespread endocrine disruption appeared. The
book then examines a series of experiments examining endocrine
disruption of animals in the laboratory which show conclusively
that fetal exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals can wreak
life-long damage. Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2000
The primary emphasis
is on the potential adverse reproductive effects of herbicide
exposure in males, because the vast majority of Vietnam veterans
are men, but since approximately 8,000 women served in Vietnam (H.Kang,
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, personal communication,
December 14, 2000), findings relevant to female reproductive
health are also included.
Sex Changed fish
This study was
initiated to determine the incidence of phenotypic sex
reversal in wild, fall chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus
tshawytcha) that returned to spawn in the Columbia River.
Fish were sampled at different locations within this
watershed to determine whether they were faithfully
expressing their genotype. We report a high incidence (84%)
of a genetic marker for the Y chromosome in phenotypic
females sampled from the wild, which was not observed in
female fish raised in hatcheries. Masculinization of Female Mosquitofish
Female
mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis holbrooki) downstream from
Kraft paper mills in Florida display masculinization of the
anal fin, an androgen-dependent trait.
Endocrine disrupting substances
The Scientific
Committee for Toxicology and Environ-mental Health at the
Swedish Environmental Protection Agency early brought up the
question regarding hazards related to environmental
chemicals with hormone dis-rupting properties.
Hermaphrodite Frogs Linked to Pesticide Use
Scientists who compared frogs
collected over the last 150 years have discovered a dramatic increase in
hermaphrodites during the times when contamination from the pesticide
DDT and other chlorinated compounds was widespread.
In Vitro and in Vivo Effects of 17ß-Trenbolone: A Feedlot Effluent Contaminant
In summary, TB is
a potent environmental androgen both in vitro and in vivo
and, in contrast to other reports, can induce developmental
abnormalities in the fetus.
Potomac’s male bass producing eggs
Scientists
believe that pollution in the South Branch of the Potomac
River in West Virginia is causing male bass to produce eggs,
although they are unsure of the exact cause. Potential
culprits include chicken estrogen in poultry manure or human
hormones that end up in the river from wastewater treatment
plant discharges.
Pollutants turning a third of male fish into females
A third of the
male fish in British rivers are turning into females because
of "gender-bending" pollutants being discharged from sewage
outflows.
Transsexual Frogs : A popular weed killer makes some frogs grow the wrong sex organs
Your drinking
water may have 30 times the dose they're getting
Male Fish becoming female
Researchers in
Colorado have made a startling discovery. Fish,
Apparently male, are developing female sexual organs.
Scientists believe it's the result of too much estrogen in
the water and they're finding estrogen in rivers across the
country.
Polluted lakes turning turtles into turtlettes
TORONTO -- Canadian researchers studying wildlife on the
Great Lakes have found sexual abnormalities in male snapping
turtles, with penis size diminished and some males able to
produce egg yolk protein, a capability normally found only
in females.
Environmental Threats to Children's Health: A Challenge for
Pediatrics: 2000 Ambulatory Pediatric Association (APA)
Presidential Address
Pesticides, along
with PCBs and other compounds also serve as endocrine
disrupters, able to exert adverse health effects through
their ability to disrupt estrogen function and other
signaling compounds such as thyroid hormone. Exposure to
these compounds has had dramatic effects on wildlife and may
be responsible in part for the doubling in the incidence
of hypospadius in the United States as well as for the
marked reduction in the age of onset of puberty in US
girls noted by Herman-Giddens et al.
WHERE HAVE ALL THE BOYS GONE? The mysterious decline in male births
Perhaps the most striking
example of a lopsided birth ratio occurred in Seveso, Italy, where a
chemical plant explosion in 1976 released a cloud of dioxin into the
atmosphere. Of the 74 children born to the most highly exposed adults
from 1977 to 1984, only 35 percent were boys. And the nine sets of
parents with the highest levels of dioxin in their blood had no boys at
all.
Male fertility isn't what it used to be:
In 1991, a Danish scientist presented the results of a study to a World
Health Organisation conference, showing that the sperm counts of Western
men had fallen by about a half over the previous 50 years. Professor
Niels Skakkebaek of the University of Copenhagen could offer no
explanation for the findings, but neither could he dismiss them as a
mere statistical fluke. More than a decade later, scientists are still
trying to explain the apparent feminisation of modern man.
Boys will be girls - eventually
Extinction threat rises as creatures ingest 'gender-bending' chemicals
from plastics and pesticides
Sperm counts have fallen by a third between 1989 and 2002, according to
some studies, while one in six British couples now experiences
difficulty in conceiving.
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