The Pollution In Newborns

I hope this article, Body Burden — The Pollution in Newborns, would cause any parent or parent-to-be to take a more in-depth look at the toxic world around us and develop strategies for creating a less toxic living environment for their young one. There's more than just eating well that you need to consider!

Article Highlights:

Not long ago scientists thought that the placenta shielded cord blood — and the developing baby — from most chemicals and pollutants in the environment. But now we know that at this critical time when organs, vessels, membranes and systems are knit together from single cells to finished form in a span of weeks, the umbilical cord carries not only the building blocks of life, but also a steady stream of industrial chemicals, pollutants and pesticides that cross the placenta as readily as residues from cigarettes and alcohol. This is the human "body burden" — the pollution in people that permeates everyone in the world, including babies in the womb.

In a study spearheaded by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) in collaboration with Commonweal, researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in umbilical cord blood from 10 babies born in August and September of 2004 in U.S. hospitals.

Among the tested chemicals are eight perfluorochemicals used as stain and oil repellants in fast food packaging, clothes and textiles — including the Teflon chemical PFOA, recently characterized as a likely human carcinogen by the EPA's Science Advisory Board — dozens of widely used brominated flame retardants and their toxic by-products; and numerous pesticides.
Of the 287 chemicals we detected in umbilical cord blood, we know that 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests. The dangers of pre- or post-natal exposure to this complex mixture of carcinogens, developmental toxins and neurotoxins have never been studied.

Early Exposure More Harmful:

Chemical exposures in the womb or during infancy can be dramatically more harmful than exposures later in life. Substantial scientific evidence demonstrates that children face amplified risks from their body burden of pollution; the findings are particularly strong for many of the chemicals found in this study, including mercury, PCBs and dioxins. Children's vulnerability derives from both rapid development and incomplete defense systems:

• A developing child's chemical exposures are greater pound-for-pound than those of adults.
• An immature, porous blood-brain barrier allows greater chemical exposures to the developing brain.
• Children have lower levels of some chemical-binding proteins, allowing more of a chemical to reach "target organs."
• A baby's organs and systems are rapidly developing, and thus are often more vulnerable to damage from chemical exposure.
• Systems that detoxify and excrete industrial chemicals are not fully developed.
• The longer future life span of a child compared to an adult allows more time for adverse effects to arise.

I've just stumbled upon a wonderful book titled Poisoned For Profit - How Toxins Are Making Our Children Chronically Ill. Although I have not read this book throughout, I've looked at it at the local book store (Mulligan Books) and found it be a wonderful read, full of good details. IF YOU ARE A NEW PARENT OR A PARENT-TO-BE, YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK! It's certainly on my to-be-purchased book list! Let me know if you've read it and what you thought of it!

Atrazine: Endocrine Disruptor Linked To Genital Changes And Sexual Preference

This interview, Endocrine Disruptors Linked To Genital Changes and Sexual Preference absolutely fascinated me and is giving me visions of the future human race unable to reproduce because the female genome has been lost! You can either read the transcription of the broadcast or listen to it with the link at the top of their webpage.

Scientists are continuing to sound the alarm about some common chemicals, including the herbicide atrazine. So, what is Atrazine? 

Atrazine is used to stop pre- and post-emergence broadleaf and grassy weeds in major crops. The compound is both effective and inexpensive, and thus is well-suited to production systems with very narrow profit margins, as is often the case with maize. Atrazine is the most widely used herbicide in conservation tillage systems, which are designed to prevent soil erosion. 

Its use is controversial due to widespread contamination in drinking water and its associations with birth defects, menstrual problems, and cancer when consumed by humans at concentrations below government standards.^[1] Although it has been excluded from a re-registration process in the European Union,^[2] it is still one of the most widely used herbicides in the world.

Highlights from the endocrine disruptor interview:

AHERN: To explain what he meant by "feminized" Hayes brought me back to his office and pulled up a picture on his laptop of a frog that had been exposed to the herbicide.
HAYES: This is an animal that looked like a female on the outside. But on the inside it had large testis, so these are testis, and this is an oviduct. So, this is the equivalent of a man with a uterus.
AHEARN: These frogs aren't just behaving like females – they're actually producing eggs and when those eggs are fertilized by normal male frogs, the babies grow up to be seemingly normal frogs. Let me say that again: the male frogs are having babies. And there are consequences. HAYES: ...because they don't have a female chromosome the females that are genetically males can only produce other males so 100 percent of their offspring would be males.
AHEARN: And more male frogs means fewer babies down the road. Hayes says this might be one reason that populations of frogs and other amphibians all over the world are going down.

AHEARN: The reproductive problems Hayes is seeing in his specimens aren't limited to frogs. Studies on rats, reptiles and even human cells exposed to atrazine showed similar results. Recently, scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey found intersex fish in one third of the waterways they tested across the United States.
And atrazine is not the only chemical to blame for causing widespread reproductive health problems. It's a member of a family of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors.

COLBORN: They're in plastics. They're in our toys, the children's toys. If you go to your kitchen sink and under your bathroom sink and look at the cleaning compounds that are there. The cosmetics. The toiletries. They're just about in everything because they've made every one of these products much nicer. They last longer. They're preservatives. They're fire retardants.
AHEARN: The endocrine system is made up of a series of glands throughout the body that control the hormonal messages that direct development. By imitating natural hormones– such as estrogen and androgen – endocrine disrupting chemicals prevent the body from sending and receiving those messages. Dr. Stephen Rosenthal, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California San Francisco, broke down some basic human developmental biology for me. He says in the womb, we all start out developing as girls.
ROSENTHAL: If you consider the gonads, which basically is the other name for the testis or the ovaries, in any baby - either boy or a girl – that, basically, these gonads are pre-programmed to become ovaries unless there's an overriding signal that tells them to become testis.
AHEARN: If you're a boy that over-riding signal comes from a gene on your Y-chromosome. It tells your gonads to become testis, instead of ovaries, and to start producing testosterone and androgen. Those hormones then travel through the body and hook up with receptors in cells.
ROSENTHAL: That sets off a chain of events inside a cell. It's like if you need a key and an ignition to start a car right, so the key goes into the ignition and then the whole thing can turn and the car goes on.
AHEARN: The car "going on" would equate to normal development of a fetus. Now picture some chewing gum in the ignition. The key won't fit. The car won't start – or, as Rosenthal explains - normal masculine development won't proceed.
ROSENTHAL: If there is some agent, some environmental disruptor that interferes with the normal functioning of the Androgen Receptor then it's very likely that in a male there will be incomplete masculinization of the external genitalia.

HAYES: People go, well, it's frogs. I go, yeah but look, the estrogen that works in this frog is exactly, chemically exactly, the same as the estrogen that regulates female reproduction. Exactly the same testosterone that's in these frogs regulating their larynx or their voice box or their breeding glands or their sperm count is exactly the same hormone in rats and in us.

AHEARN: So, what about us? Could endocrine disruptors be having feminizing effects in humans?

AHEARN: Talking about problems with reproductive health is something society has never handled well. And perhaps because most hypospadias can be corrected with surgery, very few doctors have raised questions about the underlying causes of this birth defect.

But endocrine disrupting chemicals show up in almost 100 percent of the population, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and many of these chemicals are known to disrupt normal reproductive system development in animals - think back to Tyrone Hayes' frogs here.

So I asked Dr. Theo Colborn, who's been studying endocrine disruptors for over 30 years, if she thought our environmental exposures could be affecting our reproductive health. Or more specifically, given what we're seeing with hypospadias, I asked her, do you think we are feminizing our baby boys?

COLBORN: I definitely do. I think there's a certain percentage that are definitely being affected and there's no denying it.