6 - Hormones in the world

Summary

Nobody can be sure whether environmental estrogens lie behind the quadrupling of infertility rates since 1965; if the sea of estrogens in which we live explains the fact that sperm counts are half of what they were in 1940; and if, like intersex fish and mutant frogs, male humans might begin to morph into women. Faced with the possibility of an all-female planet, authorities might finally have to sidestep the pharmaceutical companies and take action.

(Seaman 2003: 222)

Globally today, a group of chemicals in the air and in water, food and everyday household products, are suspected to be radically changing human and non-human bio-social systems. Known as environmental oestrogens or endocrine-disrupting chemicals, these substances behave like and/or disrupt endogenous sex hormones. Most of them are human-made products of the twentieth century, deriving from both banned and everyday substances: plastics and phthalates (chemicals used to make plastics flexible); pesticides such as DDT, dieldrin and chlordane; heavy metals like lead, cadmium and mercury; perfumes and musks; flame retardants; cleaning products; and industrial chemicals and by-products such as PCBs and dioxins. Endocrine disruptors exist in invisible, often infinitesimal, quantities – they can be active in parts per trillion (Solomon and Schetter 2000: 1474) – and are found in every part of the globe. According to reports from environmental non-governmental organisations like the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF 1999: 3), ‘There is no clean, uncontaminated place anywhere on Earth and no creature untouched by this legacy.’