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TODAY Wednesday 11 February 1998 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Alligator in the Coal Mine

Alligators, like humans, sit atop the food chain. We eat animals that eat animals that eat the plants that draw on the water, etc. As they make their way up the chain, certain long-lasting chemicals are said to "accumulate" in the fat cells of the higher predators. A being at the top of the chain is more susceptible to debilitating chemical exposures than a being at the bottom. Some significant human exposures to dioxin, for example, come about when the toxin is ejected out of a smokestack, blown across the troposphere, deposited on the ground in raindrops, drawn up into grasses, eaten by cows, accumulated in cow fat, and then converted into the mozzarella on a double-cheese pizza.

In the Everglades, alligators are the top predators. They serve as slithering alarm bells to let us know when the murky soup is getting dangerous. One of the most famous of the discoveries which gave rise to concern about endocrine-disrupting chemicals was a study of Florida alligators by a zoologist named Louis Guillette. He recorded a dramatic reduction in the sizes of the penises of the alligator population in Lake Apopka after that body of water was contaminated with a dumping of some synthetic organochlorines. People otherwise uninterested in endocrine research can often cite, in a general way, the central memorable finding of Professor Guillette's research.

Now Guillette is back, having recently seen what he describes as "a major red flag." Yesterday's Environmental News Network brought the story. Alligator populations in three Florida lakes -- Apopka, Okeechobee, and Griffin -- have been dropping lately. Professor Guillette and colleagues found that the alligators' hormone systems had been malfunctioning. Thyroids were damaged and sex hormones were out of whack: males had significantly depressed testosterone levels and females had significantly elevated estrogen levels. "It could mean that these animals would not mature properly," Guillette was quoted as saying. "They could have altered reproduction. They could have altered resistance to disease."

This latest news, coupled with a recent study from England on the feminization of male sex organs in fish populations exposed to organochlorines, confirms the reasonableness of the anxieties about endocrine disrupters expressed in the 1996 book, "Our Stolen Future." There will be no quick answers on the relationships between synthetic chemicals and natural hormones -- is there a more exquisitely complicated field of medical research? -- but the questions can be counted on to carry well into the new century.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE

For those of you blessed with functional reproductive systems and capable of deploying the requisite time, love, and money, pregnancy and parenting may be right up the old alley. Our resident guru is Susan Alexander, recent mom and eternal wilderness enthusiast.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

2/10: Inconvenient Public Opinion
2/9: Remember Penn Station
2/6: Adam Smith and Automobile Efficiency
2/5: Clean Water, Naturally
2/4: Roll, Storms, Roll
2/3: Land Purchase Fever
2/2: Groundhog Day in the Persian Gulf
1/30: Trees and Hormones
1/29: Things To Come (2)
1/28: Things To Come
1/27: 'Bye, 'Bye Brazil
1/26: Jaywalking and Jaydriving
1/23: Good Biotech, Bad Biotech
1/22: No More Roads
1/21: Swordfish

To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.