[www.nature.com]

"The vast amounts of steroids that are fed to cattle in some countries end up in farm run-off and may affect the environment even after they are broken down by sunlight.

Hormone-disrupting chemicals may be far more prevalent in lakes and rivers than previously thought. Environmental scientists have discovered that although these compounds are often broken down by sunlight, they can regenerate at night, returning to life like zombies.

Endocrine disruptors — pollutants that unbalance hormone systems — are known to harm fish, and there is growing evidence linking them to health problems in humans, including infertility and various cancers1. But pinpointing specific culprits from the vast array of trace chemicals in the environment has proved difficult. Indeed, concentrations of known endocrine disruptors in rivers often seem to be too low to explain harmful effects in aquatic wildlife, says Kolodziej.

Kolodziej says that the work casts considerable uncertainty over sampling results for steroid endocrine disruptors, and suggests that a survey of their breakdown compounds in the environment is now urgently needed.

It also highlights a serious drawback in relying on studies that look for single environmental contaminants, rather than a spectrum of their derivatives, he adds. Chemical studies should be complemented with bioassays that use living cells to detect endocrine disruptors, Vandenberg adds."

Chemical waste and social statistics, Everyday life comes more health risk.
30 years ago these chemicals banned and you can find trace amounts in every human on this planet. clean up science has fuged up again.

Is this a sign of a healthy planet or a sick planet from mad sciences???

PCBs and DDT

Factsheet courtesy of the Washington Toxics Coalition.

Banned But Still With Us

PCBs and DDT are chemicals that were banned more than 30 years ago, but our air, water, land, and bodies are so contaminated that decades of cleanup efforts have yet to eliminate their threats to our health.

About PCBs

PCBs - polychlorinated biphenyls - are synthetic (human-made) chemicals first produced in the late 1920s. They were used as cooling fluids in electrical equipment and machinery because of their durability and resistance to fire.
•Monsanto stopped producing them in 1977. The EPA mandated phase out of most uses shortly thereafter.
•PCBs have a similar chemical structure to PBDEs, which are currently used as flame retardants in electronics, furniture, and other consumer goods.

About DDT

DDT - dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane - was developed as an insecticide in the 1940s, and was widely used during World War II to combat insect-borne diseases.
•DDT’s effectiveness, persistence, and low cost made it popular for agricultural and commercial uses. More than a billion pounds were used in the U.S. over a 30-year period.
•EPA banned nearly all domestic uses of DDT in 1972, after the publication of Silent Spring and broad public outcry about DDT's impacts on wildlife and people.
•Today, use of DDT is limited to malaria control programs in some developing countries.

How am I exposed?

We are still exposed to PCBs and DDT through our food.
•Animal and fatty foods contain the highest levels of DDT and PCBs because they are stored in fat and increase in concentration as they move up the food chain.
•Even though it was banned in 1972, vegetables, meat, fish, and dairy products contain DDT.
•PCBs and DDT build up in sediment in rivers, lakes, and coastal areas, then accumulate in fish.
•Women who consume PCBs in their diet pass them to their children in breast milk: infants may get 6 to 12% of their lifetime exposure to PCBs from breastfeeding.
•PCBs are a major contaminant in Puget Sound where they are found at very high levels in salmon and in endangered orca whales, among the most contaminated marine mammals in the world.

Why should I be concerned?

About PCBs:
•PCBs can have profound effects on intellectual development. Children with greater exposure to PCBs have lower birth weights, slowed growth, and poorer performance on tests of brain development.
•PCBs cause tumors in laboratory animals. EPA lists PCBs as probable human carcinogens.
•Studies suggest that PCBs are also toxic to the immune system, reproductive organs, and thyroid.

About DDT:
•Exposure to DDT is harmful to the nervous system. People exposed to high levels exhibit dizziness, tremor, irritability, and convulsions. Workers with longer term exposure have lasting neurological and cognitive problems.
•Pregnant women exposed to DDT are more likely to have premature or small-for-gestational-age babies. DDT is considered a hormone disrupting chemical due to its estrogen-like properties.
•DDT causes cancer in laboratory animals. EPA lists DDT as a probable human carcinogen.

What can government and industry do?

The histories of DDT and PCBs are both success stories and cautionary tales. Since these chemicals were banned 30 years ago, levels in our bodies have declined. And yet, we still face levels that could be causing harm—decades after regulatory action.

PCBs are a major contaminant in Puget Sound, and evidence is accumulating that they are a serious threat to the Sound’s wildlife, too.
•Puget Sound’s endangered orca whales have accumulated PCBs to the point that they rank among the most contaminated marine mammals in the world.
•Levels in orcas already exceed those needed to cause health effects such as immune system depression.
•To this day, runoff from agricultural lands transports DDT-containing sediment to rivers and streams, where it is taken up by fish.

Washington state should restore the health of Puget Sound by: fully cleaning up PCB contamination; preventing recontamination; and phasing out other persistent toxic chemicals such as PBDEs and perfluorinated

Back to chemicals 3 million acres Agent Orange defoliant and food crop poison
sprayed on over three million acres is killing today just as well as it was 40 years ago in the worlds worst chemical warfare program ever waged on humans( Operation Ranchhand)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2013 01:03AM by riverhousebill.

nobody likes to see or recognize the "secondary effects" of economical driven societies, where health priorities are at the bottom.