DDP Newsletter Vol. XL, No. 3
A current invisible scary threat, impossible for people to verify for themselves, is endocrine disruptors (EDs) lurking in the water. This topic first appeared in the National Library of Medicine PubMed data base in 1995, reached a maximum of 1,088 citations in 2019, and still occurs almost 1,000 times/y, dozens of times in association with plastics.
The term was coined at the 1991 Wingspread conference, a rebranding of the more benign term “endocrine modulators,” explains Steve Milloy (tinyurl.com/4ssdrfjj).
On Aug 23, 1994, the endocrine-disruptor scare was reported in the New York Times in an article titled “Pesticides May Leave Legacy of Hormonal Chaos.” Referring to some wildlife populations, Theo Colborn, the activist who convened the Wingspread conference, stated: “I’d say we are on a fast track to extinction…. You would expect the same thing to happen to human populations.” Colburn, a pharmacist, earned a Ph.D. in zoology at age 58 (ibid.).
In 1996, Colburn coauthored the book Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival: A Scientific Detective Story, applauded by Al Gore, warning that humans and wildlife were facing a new and serious threat from infinitesimally small concentrations of synthetic chemicals, which are claimed to interfere with hormonal messages involved in the control of growth and development, most critically in the fetus.
Chemicals, especially those derived from demon “fossil carbon,” are now a major theme of Greenpeace, which has shifted from its original antinuclear focus to issues that bring in more money to augment its $386 million annual revenue, as explained by Willie Soon at our 2019 annual meeting (https://tinyurl.com/rujazfft).
An Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP), which still lacks regulatory authority, is currently making its way through an estimated 87,000 chemicals.
Allegedly there is a bizarre nonlinear triphasic dose response such that “an ED might wreak havoc at very low and very high doses” but do nothing at all at moderate doses at which cells have a protective response (https://tinyurl.com/mt3jtsjv). EDs are often measured in parts per trillion (ppt or ng/L). How synthetic chemicals destroy the principle that the dose makes the poison (tinyurl.com/5n7nyke7) is unexplained.
For comparison, the biphasic dose-response curve for radiation hormesis shows a benefit at low doses because radiation is believed to stimulate DNA repair mechanisms that also protect against DNA damage resulting from natural metabolism (https://tinyurl.com/ym6akyzu). These are overwhelmed at higher doses.
EDs might also be “linked” to cancer (even non-hormonally sensitive types), obesity, and lower IQs, by unknown mechanisms (https://tinyurl.com/43aavaa2).
What to do? Drink less bottled water? Ban plastic straws? Worry about 10 microscopic plastic particles in a cubic meter of water, as Dr. Soon illustrates? Just simply give money to Greenpeace to detoxify the world (https://tinyurl.com/3txj4dyk)?
Suspect chemicals occur virtually everywhere in consumer products; e.g., pesticides, cosmetics, flame retardants, and cleaning agents. However, Dr. Stephen Safe, a professor of toxicology at Texas A & M University, has calculated that synthetic chemicals contribute less than one one-thousandth of 1 percent of the amount of natural estrogen-like compounds that people consume in their diets (Milloy, op. cit.).
Aquatic animals may be strongly affected by hormonally active substances.These include natural hormones excreted in the urine of livestock, wild animals, and humans, or pharmaceutical products, such as the contraceptives used by a large proportion of women. Most are not removed in wastewater treatment facilities. Better wastewater treatment is needed, and it is suggested that pharmaceutical waste should be incinerated instead of going to landfills or sewers (tinyurl.com/yz9fdvwb).
If an adult drinks 2 liters of water a day, drinking unprocessed wastewater may supply 40 ng of estradiol (or equivalent estrogens) per day. This can be compared to endogenous secretion of about 100–200 μg/day in women or one tenth of this in men. A conservative estimate is that approximately one thousandth to one ten-thousandth of the estrogen available to the body may be contributed from drinking water. Less than one hundred thousandth of the estrogen used in hormone replacement therapy may be consumed from drinking water. The conclusion is that any physiological effects of estrogen from drinking water will be undetectable in people (tinyurl.com/2rf5m3az).
Drinking water treatment is increasingly using advanced oxidation techniques for the removal of undesirable organic compounds, including cyanobacterial toxins and anthropogenic contaminants. These processes employ a combination of particle removal, ozone oxidation, and activated carbon adsorption. Recent studies on estrogen removal have shown greater than 99% removal with ozone (ibid.).
IF NOT MICROPLASTICS OR CHEMICALS, WHAT?
Unquestionably, serious health problems are increasing, including those listed by Greenpeace: infertility, cancer, obesity, autoimmune conditions, and neurodevelopment disorders such as autism. About 30 in 1,000 children aged 5–8 have an autism diagnosis. New diagnoses in male children soared by 185% between 2011 and 2022 (https://tinyurl.com/3vf5a72f).
There are reports of declining sperm counts. And microplastics have been found in male reproductive organs, as well as everywhere else in the body. “More research is needed to uncover the consequences of microplastics in live bodies given their ‘capacity to act as a vector for pathogens, as well as induce and be influenced by oxidative stress, inflammation, and immune response’” (https://tinyurl.com/yespm8fb).
Scientific American sees microplastics as an opportunity. “Regulations are a great driver of innovation. And the thing about plastics is that their source is fossil fuels. We have to reduce fossil fuel use anyway to address climate change—why not also stop companies from turning it into plastic? In the coming years we don’t want to be dealing with the consequences of microplastics, just as we are currently dealing with [the consequences of] climate change” (https://tinyurl.com/4b23t2hx).
What else began to be found in testicles, ovaries, placenta, brain, and other tissues recently? What change in public health interventions preceded the escalation in chronic diseases and neurodevelopmental disorders affecting children? Foreign mRNA surrounded by lipid nanoparticles is found everywhere after mass vaccination with Operation Warp Speed COVID vaccines. Concerns about their serious adverse effects have raised questions about the “safe and effective” 70-plus dose childhood vaccine schedule. These injections are intended to provoke the immune system and to induce permanent changes. How do their effects compare with ppt concentrations of minimally reactive accidentally ingested compounds? Where is the comparable research effort?