Men - the newest endangered species.

ResearchBlogging.orgMaybe people aren't listening when scientists talk about how Bisphenol A, a chemical used in plastics, is a pseudo-estrogen. Maybe others think that there are no side effects to flushing their extra or expired birth control down the toilet. Whoever is to blame, one thing is for certain: the male gender is threatened, and gravely.

A new report released today by CHEMtrust is the most comprehensive review to date of gender-bending chemicals and their effects on males of all species, from road kill to humans, drawn from over 250 studies worldwide - and it doesn't have good news. Still not freaking out?

"In mammals, genital disruption in males has been widely reported, including: intersex features (such as egg tissue in the testes of the male); small phallus; small testes; undescended testes; abnormal testes; or ambiguous genitals" details the press release from CHEMtrust. That's on top of the more than fifty percent drop in average sperm count that men of our species have experienced in the past fifty years.

Yeah, thought that might bother you a bit.

Basically, we are releasing an onslaught of hundreds of thousands of hormone-mimicking chemicals into our waterways each year from pesticides, manufacturing chemicals, and even unused prescriptions. These chemicals, known as "endocrine disrupters" act like estrogen and other feminine hormones. When exposed to the developing young, these chemicals are particularly dangerous - especially for males. Numerous studies, like this one, warn us that even humans are very much at risk.

Yet still, on Wednesday, Britain will flagship the opposition to new regulations on pesticides that are responsible for a large portion of these gender-bending effects. They claim that the regulations would cause an agricultural collapse, which is hogwash, as the regulations have so many loopholes even a one-legged farmer could jump through them.

We need to regulate these chemicals NOW to try and prevent an unbelievable amount of ecological damage that we can't undo. If our outputs of these endocrine disrupters go unchecked, men will quickly become a threatened species - if not extinct.

I Norgil Damgaard (2002). Impact of exposure to endocrine disrupters inutero and in childhood on adult reproduction Best Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 16 (2), 289-309 DOI: 10.1053/beem.2002.0205

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As a Physician, I am incredibly dissapointed by the medical profession in general for not making a vociferious stand against the general and serious health risks engenendered by our modern-day conveience oriented lifestyle.

I recall reading a study in the 1980's regarding the massive dissapearance of fish from a lake in Wiesbaden, Germany. This was not due however to a toxic die-off, but rather a profound shift in the sexual development of the fish population. Virtually all of the remaining fish were of female gender.

Fish are fertilized exogenously, ie. the sperm is deposited above the chache of eggs and allowed to drift down onto them. During the previous decade, various plastics manufacturers had begun operating upstream, releasing their industrial wastes into the nearby rivers, which would subsequently float downstream into the lake.

The lake waters, when tested, contained high amounts of plastic by-products as well as a multitude of other contaminants, including such things as sedatives and beta-blockers, illustrating that eventually everything gets into the water table.....even human sewage.

Further tests showed that the pseudo-estrogens of plastic by-products had such an influential effect on fish development that virtually all those remaining were female. But estrogen has other, more nefarious effects than simply decreasing populations of male fish. Many disease states are estrogen-dependent....including Breast Cancer and Ovarian Cancer, as well as others.

The United States is a major producer of plastics as well as one of the largest utilizers of plastic products; almost everything consumable these days can be found packaged in plastic.If we consider this carefully and extrapolate from this revelation, we can apply it to developments in the evolving pathology of estrogen-linked disease states, both nationally and globally.

During the 1960's, prior to the plastic reveloution, breast-cancer in American women was significantly lower that it presently is, about 1 in 25 or so. It is now hovering in the vicinity of 1 in 7.....an astonishing incerase, defying modern medicinal claims of its widespread progress regarding the reduction and elimination of disease.

Unfortunately, plastic by-products are just one of a pantheon of potentially harmful compounds poisioning our air, food and water supplies. The FDA only tests for about six heavy metals....that's it. Many so-called 'Spring Waters' test for nothing at all, opening the possibility that they are perhaps even more contaminated than our tap water, which certainly is. The best on can do is steam distilled water; regretably, that too is packaged in plactic. It seems we just can't get away from it......

Thank you for taking the time to read this.....please think on it.........

By Peterson M.D. (not verified) on 10 Apr 2011 #permalink