in the trenches/endocrine disrupters

 

4. Voices

"Our Stolen Future is a critically important book that forces us to ask new questions about the synthetic chemicals that we have spread across this Earth. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we must urgently seek the answers. All of us have the right to know and an obligation to learn."

-- Vice President Al Gore, in the book's Foreword

"Unless the environmental load of synthetic hormone disrupters is abated and controlled, large scale dysfunction at the population level is possible."

-- Wingspread Statement (1991), from a meeting of 21 experts from diverse disciplines from the U.S., Canada and Europe.

"The DES experience is rich in lessons. This tragic and unintended experiment demonstrated that chemicals could cross the placenta, disrupt the development of the baby, and have serious effects that might not be evident until decades later. This was a previously unrecognized phenomenon: delayed long-term effects that did not emerge until the child reached puberty or anytime later in life."

-- Our Stolen Future

"The potential impact of these compounds on hormone-dependent physiological processes such as conception and fetal development, as well as on disease processes such as osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease clearly demand further exploration."

-- NIEHS initiative on the environment and women's health

"Further research is needed before such effects can be either demonstrated or ruled out."

-- EPA Fact Sheet: EPA Special Report On Endocrine Disruption

"The Precautionary Principle: This is the keystone of WWF's pollution prevention policies. Formulated at the 1992 United Nations 'Earth Summit' Conference (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, it states: 'Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.' (Or, in other words, better safe than sorry.)"

-- from World Wildlife Fund's Pollution Prevention Objectives

"Our Stolen Future is a preposterous tall tale about how manmade chemicals are disrupting normal hormonal processes to cause everything from breast and prostate cancer to declining sperm counts to attention deficit disorder to lesbian birds."

-- Steven J. Milloy, Junk Science Page

"The authors of Our Stolen Future have posed a theory that deserves a full and fair scientific investigation. When scientists encounter the unknown, their training leads them to try to discover why things happen. They propose and test theories. To the extent that the authors urge going directly from observations and theories to public policy action, without stopping for validation, we disagree with them."

-- Where We Stand, Chemical Manufacturers Association

"The potential threat of endocrine disrupters is a critical issue for our time. By the manner in which we as scientists participate in the public discourse on this issue, we can help ensure reasoned, careful deliberation of a most important question....Scientists must decide whether we should contribute to the ongoing debate solely by providing data or whether we should also recognize and accept responsibility to participate in the equally component of policy-making that involves the rendering of value judgments."

-- Anne Hirshfield, Michael Hirshfield, and Jodi Flaws, in a Science review of Our Stolen Future.

"The suggestions that industrial estrogenic chemicals contribute to an increased incidence of breast cancer in women and male reproductive problems is not plausible. ... The major human intake of endocrine disrupters associated with the estrogen-induced response pathways are naturally occurring estrogens found in foods."

-- Stephen H. Safe, Environmental Health Perspectives, 4/95

"Even if most microorganisms in the drinking water supply are captured on filters and irradiated, subsequent chlorination is required to ensure the water's purity as it moves through the distribution system to the tap. No other water disinfection method alone -- other than chlorine -- provides this kind of residual protection from the regrowth of disease-causing microorganisms once the water leaves the treatment plant."

-- C.T. "Kip" Howlett, Vice President Managing Director, Chlorine Chemistry Council

"Overall, testing requirements for EPA registration-involving all areas of product chemistry, human and wildlife hazards, and other pertinent human, environmental and product performance areas-involve 120 or more separate tests."

-- The Toxicology Round Table Working Group of the American Crop Protection Association

"Children cannot be considered little adults in the area of environmental medicine."

-- Neonatologist Cynthia Bearer, Environmental Health Perspectives, 8/94

"The stakes are so high here that I don't believe we can wait. I can imagine twenty years from now, the grandchild coming to us and saying: well, you knew this was going on with animals, why didn't you do anything about it? Can we afford to say well, we were waiting to confirm this state in humans? And I think the answer is no, we shouldn't be waiting, we should be doing something now."

-- Dr. Ana Soto, Assault on the Male, BBC (from WWF Canada)

"The myriad reports on hormone-related toxicants are beginning to generate public anxiety and confusion."

-- National Research Council draft summary

"Although trends in hormonally related diseases have not been clearly linked to environmental chemicals, it is probable that endocrine disrupters are contributing to human diseases and dysfunction."

-- Environmental Health Perspectives, editorial, 4/96

 

More on Endocrines:
Table of Contents | Twelve Hundred Words or Less... | Web Resources
Activist Groups | Voices | New in the Literature | Hotspots
On the Other Hand... | Funders | What You Can Do