Experts signal seriousness of hormone disruptors

You know something must be going on when a medical specialty organization for endocrinology publishes a scientific paper on chemicals in plastics and pesticides and personal care products. 

Endocrinology is the study of the endocrine glands, like the thyroid, pituitary, prostate and ovary, and the hormones they make that regulate our bodies’ functions and allow us to reproduce. The Endocrine Society is “the world’s oldest, largest and most active organization devoted to research on hormones and the clinical practice of endocrinology.”

So why is this organization that published clinical guidelines with titles like, Case Detection, Diagnosis and Treatment of Patients with Primary Aldosteronism concerning itself with toxic chemicals?

Because news science is showing that some chemicals act like hormones. Hormone-like chemicals are the unwanted surprise in food containers and house dust, sending the wrong signal to the wrong part of the body at the wrong time, fooling the body into wrongly turning functions on and off. The 485 footnotes in the 34 page paper are mostly new studies that describe how these chemicals can impact the reproductive system of females and males, harm breast development, metabolism, the thyroid and heart, and promote breast cancer, prostate cancer and obesity.  All of these diseases and conditions and systems are regulated by hormones and the paper describes how all of them can be negatively impacted by chemicals that act like hormones.

The paper describes the new thinking about “the developmental basis of adult disease” where the harm from chemical exposures that occur during pregnancy or in the first years of life don’t show up until the adult is infertile or develops cancer.  It describes the importance of learning from well-designed animal studies because “studies are ethically and practically very limited in humans.” And it lays out the need for more basic science, clinical and epidemiological research while recommending steps that clinicians can take right now in how they treat their patients.  But the recommendations don’t end there. Instead they end by answering the question: What should be done to protect humans?

Here’s the authors powerful answer:

The key to minimizing morbidity is preventing the disorders in the first place. However, recommendations for prevention are difficult to make because exposure to one chemical at a given time rarely reflects the current exposure history or ongoing risks of human beings during development or at other life stages, and we usually do not know what exposures the individual has had in utero or in other life stages.

In the absence of direct information regarding cause and effect, the precautionary principle is critical to enhancing reproductive and endocrine health. As endocrinologists, we suggest that The Endocrine Society actively engage in lobbying for regulation seeking to decrease human exposure to many endocrine-disrupting agents….Our chemical policies at the local, state and national levels, as well as globally, need to be formulated, financed, and implemented to ensure the best public health.

Amen.