Endocrine Disruptors Linked to Birth Defects in Midlothian Make the NYT Opinion Page

In today's New York Times, columnist Nicolas Kristof writes extensively about the threat of endocrine disruptors – those chemicals that, instead of killing you outright, do strange and horrible things to your hormones and reproductive systems like genital deformities, breast cancer, infertility, diabetes and even obesity. Endocrine disruptors are everywhere, in food, cosmetics, even the receipts you get at the grocery store or your ATM machine...and the air pollution from many kinds of facilities.  It's the hormone-wrecking properties of one such chemical – bisphenol-A, or BPA, used to line food cans – that prompted eight medial organizations representing MDs in the fields of genetics, gynecology, and urology to say BPA should be banned from the marketplace last year. But it's clear that there are many, many chemicals, including less exotic ones like lead, and dioxin, that also act as hormone disruptors in the body. As Kristof explains, scientists know that even the tiniest variations in hormone levels influence fetal development. Endocrine disruptors play a kind of birth defect roulette as they course around the mother's body and end up in the fetus' bloodstream. In making his argument, Kristoff uses the example of a very specific birth defect, Hypospadias – a misplacement of the urethra – is now twice as common as it used to be and cites a leading researcher linking this trend to increased exposure to endocrine disruptors.  Why is this important for North Texans? Because the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) found that the incidence of Hypospadias was approximately four times higher in Midlothian than the state of Texas as a whole. Remember, everyone is exposed to a constant sea of endocrine disruptors just from everyday living, so that wouldn't explain the much higher rate of a specific birth defect linked to the chemicals in Midlothian. But maybe operating three huge cement plants plus a steel mill could.  That same ATSR study – officially "inconclusive," also found a much higher rate for Microcephaly, where the newborn's head is more than two standard deviations smaller than the average, and Craniosynostosis, a condition in which one or more of the skulls' fibrous sutures prematurely fuses. That was only one study of a specific area. We know the Frisco lead smelter generates large quantities of dioxin. We don't know the impact of those releases. We know that gas drilling also involves a lot of chemicals identified a endocrine disruptors, but we don't how the last decade of urban drilling in the Barnett Shale has dispersed them or what their cumulative effect has been. According to Kristof, many scientists have seen enough proof and now want to better protect us from the dangers of endocrine disruptors. "For several well-studied endocrine disruptors, I think it's fair to say that we have enough data to conclude that these chemicals are not safe for human populations," according to Dr. Linda Vandenberg, who was the lead author of a new report we featured last month that concludes there are no safe doses for these kinds of chemicals. When it comes to the effects of chemical exposure, government regulations often lag far behind the science. How long will it take this warning to be implemented into public health precautions? And why don't we have a system that examines the possible impact to human health of a chemical BEFORE it's released into the marketplace?