Endocrine disruptors and the human reproductive system

There was a time when certain cancers were extremely rare. But recently there is a disturbing trend relating to an increased incidence of once unheard of cancers. It seemed that the 250 synthetic chemicals that we were incubating in our bodies were having a strange effect on our development.
Evidence was gathering that these synthetic chemicals were mimicking some of the hormones in our blood. Hormones are extremely potent chemical messengers. They work in concentrations as low as parts per billion. Hormones are responsible for coordinating and synchronizing events at crucial stages of our development, ensuring that we grow properly. But what happens when our bodies start to confuse synthetic chemicals for hormones? What happens when we start to disturb the delicate internal environment within our bodies?

 

Endocrine disruptors and male reproduction

Better diagnosis, better treatments and overall better understanding has helped stem the increased incidence of certain types of cancers and helped curb the number of cancer related deaths.
But the incidence of certain types of cancers has continued to rise continually. In the industrialized countries: the United Kingdom, Australia, France and the United States, there has been a 2-4% average increase per year over the last six decades in cases of testicular cancer. Among young men, it is now the most common type of cancer. Testicular cancer, once so rare, has now become an everyday term in most industrialized societies.

 

Evidence showing the negative impact of endocrine disrupters

There was no way for sure to know if endocrine disrupters were responsible for the many changes seen in both the wildlife and human populations. But laboratory experiments on animals, namely mice, showed an alarming correlation between the effects of synthetic chemicals like PCB’s and DDT and the ailments seen in nature… and humans.
To compound this further, more information was gathered from the period when millions of mothers were wrongly prescribed the synthetic estrogen drug DES. The information confirmed the results gathered through animal experimentation.

 

Endocrine disrupters affected the fetus during the most crucial periods of development

Experiments on mice showed that exposure to estrogen-like chemicals at critical moments of fetal growth played a role in the future development of both vaginal cancer in female mice and prostrate disease in male mice. DES had proven this to be true in the case of human females.
But further experiments proved that there were more worrying consequences to our synthetic chemical load. More work on male mice given DES showed that they not only showed a higher propensity for prostate disease but showed that they were actually producing female proteins in their seminal vesicles. Male mice treated with DES were producing the female secretory protein Lactoferrin. This absolutely never happens in normal male mice and it indicated that the mice had been changed at a very deep molecular level.

 

What does this all mean?

Scientists had proven through laboratory experiments that endocrine disruptors caused three major changes to higher animals during important stages of their development. They had proven that:

• Endocrine disruptors can cause obvious structural changes to the reproductive system. For example testicular non-descent.
• Endocrine disrupters also caused delayed effects. It caused changes to cells that were visible under the microscope that eventually led to vaginal and prostrate cancers.
• But most crucially of all they had shown that endocrine disruptors could cause changes to cells at a fundamental level. Changing the way that DNA expresses proteins, scrambling the process so that males could express female proteins.

But what were the consequences of this evidence? What long term damage is this slow almost languid process involving synthetic chemicals going to cause?