Do the frog and fish abnormalities tell us anything about the Boy Troubles?
Nicholas Kristof in today’s New York Times takes on what Leonard Sax dealt with in an entire book, Boys Adrift. Odd that Kristoff didn’t quote Sax. I’m posting this from a cabin in the Shenandoah Valley overlooking the South Fork of the Shenandoah, one of the rivers in the Potomac watershed where fish abnormalities — male smallmouth bass developing eggs — have been found.
Males, whether fish or human, are more vulnerable to pollutants. If you want the full scary picture, I suggest giving Sax’s book a read.
Here’s Kristoff:
In the Potomac watershed near Washington, male smallmouth bass have rapidly transformed into “intersex fish” that display female characteristics. This was discovered only in 2003, but the latest survey found that more than 80 percent of the male smallmouth bass in the Potomac are producing eggs.
Now scientists are connecting the dots with evidence of increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys. For example, up to 7 percent of boys are now born with undescended testicles, although this often self-corrects over time. And up to 1 percent of boys in the United States are now born with hypospadias, in which the urethra exits the penis improperly, such as at the base rather than the tip.
Apprehension is growing among many scientists that the cause of all this may be a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors. They are very widely used in agriculture, industry and consumer products. Some also enter the water supply when estrogens in human urine - compounded when a woman is on the pill - pass through sewage systems and then through water treatment plants.
These endocrine disruptors have complex effects on the human body, particularly during fetal development of males.
“A lot of these compounds act as weak estrogen, so that’s why developing males - whether smallmouth bass or humans - tend to be more sensitive,” said Robert Lawrence, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s scary, very scary.”
Tags: pollutants
