I just wanted to post a quick follow-up to Erin’s previous post about early puberty.
The trend towards early puberty is scary and strange. We know that girls with high body fat are more likely to start early, but there are other environmental factors that are clearly at least partially responsible, namely endocrine disruptors.
I have done so much research on endocrine disruptors – synthetic chemicals that act like hormones - it came close to making my eyes as well as my heart bleed. It’s scary stuff.
A staggering variety of synthetic chemicals are capable of acting like hormones, most usually estrogen. The lining of tin cans, plastic bottles, the runoff from oil refineries and paper mills, chemicals in cosmetics and soaps - the list is endless. Once they get into an animal’s body (such as your own) they can interfere with hormonal circuits and can send things haywire: early puberty, miscarriages, abnormal sex characteristics (especially in wildlife, like fish and reptiles, which can switch gender more easily), altered ratio of male to female offspring, cancer. The list goes on and on.
One very curious thing about this is that the chemicals in beauty products are frequently capable of acting like endocrine disruptors. So young girls start using make-up and nail polish to look like teens, which quite possibly could accelerate their transition into puberty (obviously we can’t prove this for sure but the evidence is mounting).
This definitely isn’t ironic, it’s not fitting - god I’m not sure what the word is for it.
But it is sickeningly weird.
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four comments
Just curious... what is the average onset age of puberty now compared to say 50 to 60 years ago?
Posted by Michelle
October 4, 2007, 5:50 AM
An answer for Michelle! Strange coincidink - I just got this posting to my inbox: http://www.breastcancerfund.org/site/....
This links to an article called "The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls: What We Know, What We Need to Know", and the synopsis states that:
Girls get their first periods today, on average, a few months earlier than did girls 40 years ago, but they get their breasts one to two years earlier. Over the course of a few decades, the childhoods of U.S. girls have been significantly shortened.
Posted by Thea
October 4, 2007, 10:05 AM
but there are other environmental factors that are clearly at least partially responsible, namely endocrine disruptors.
Got some evidence? I'm not unwilling to believe you, I just so far have no reason to.
Posted by Sara
October 8, 2007, 8:43 PM
Sara: I'm happy to provide some evidence.
First of all, for some easy reading/summaries, I will shamelessly point you towards a few pieces I myself have written on the subject:
This from The Globe and Mail:
http://www.zoecormier.com/view.asp?ID=6
This from The Ecologist:
http://www.zoecormier.com/view.asp?ID=42
And this from Corporate Knights (although two years old now so a wee bit dated on what the government is doing):
http://www.corporateknights.ca/conten...
In sum: It is very difficult to "prove" that an environmental factor is responsible for an adverse health effect in human populations. As one scientist once said to me, "If everybody is exposed, how can we tell if this chemical is affecting us?"
We know from lab studies that these chemicals act like hormones and can adversely affect lab animals (the Canadian, US and EU governments acknowledge and actively study this). And it is also no secret that these chemicals can adversely affect wildlife, for example alligators in Lake Apopka suffered malformed genitals after a pesticide spill; fish downstream from paper mills and waste treatment plants are frequently found to have intersexual gonads; the examples are countless.
Now, studies in humans are very difficult - but some are appearing, for example:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/d...
If you still want to know more, here's a good resource, which posts all the new studies and news reports with concise, accessible summaries:
http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/
Enough evidence? I could continue if you like...
Posted by Zoe
October 10, 2007, 2:12 PM
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