Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- Chicken Estrogen? or? ... Mummy's my Father
dlmcneely at lunet.edu
Date: Fri Oct 15 2004 - 15:48:45 CDT
Of course, these are not the first reports of sex perturbations in wild populations due to pollutants. Mosquitofish, alligators, snapping turtles, are some of the animals previously reported to be affected. Declining sperm counts in men over the course of the 20th century may be due to estrogen mimics, including DDT and phthalate plasticizers. We have a large increase in recent years to "ideopathic" gynocomastia in men. Many cases of gynocomastia are attributable to use of steroids for athletic training, and others to age, but when the case is called ideopathic, that simply means that the examining physician cannot explain it based on any known etiology.
I'm sort of wandering now, but the abnormal sex development in wild animals is documented. I'll try to look it up when I get a chance.
Dave
David L. McNeely, Ph.D., Professor of Biology
Langston University; P.O. Box 1500
Langston, OK 73050; email: dlmcneely at lunet.edu
telephone: (405) 466-6025; fax: 405) 466-3307
home page http://www.lunet.edu/mcneely
"Where are we going?" "I don't know, are we there yet?"
----- Original Message -----
From: Moontanman at aol.com
Date: Friday, October 15, 2004 1:26 pm
Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- Chicken Estrogen? or? ... Mummy's my Father
> In a message dated 10/15/04 1:21:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> onefish2fish at comcast.net writes:
>
>
> > These emerging contaminants were hard to detect without the
> finely tuned
> > equipment developed recently. The first nationwide survey,
> conducted in 1999
> >
> > and 2000, found hormones in about 37 percent of the streams
> surveyed and
> > caffeine in more than half.
> >
> >
>
> I read a study, from England I think, that showed the water there
> was
> significantly polluted with prozac. Possibly a good dose of prozac
> could solve the
> snakehead problem? It might calm them down and hinder their sex
> drive! More to
> the point we may be looking at the next wave of pollutants that
> are only coming
> to light after the gross pollution of last century or more have
> been brought
> under partial control. Well, maybe not control but at least we are
> more aware
> of the problems and are making some progress towards solving them.
> Only now we
> find a whole new set of problems waiting underneath the surface of
> the old.
> In this case I wonder what the effects of this pollution may be
> having on
> humans? How long have these effects been going on and is there
> anyway for us to
> really escape this pollution. It is easy to blame industry for
> pollution but
> humans have been polluting in some way since our genesis. The only
> real difference
> until recently has been the scale of this pollution. Now we are
> seeing the
> build up of chemicals that would have never been released in
> significant amounts
> under any non industrial conditions. Many of these chemicals will
> be very
> difficult if not impossible to control. The fall of the Roman
> Empire has been
> attributed, at least in part, by many to have been the result of
> poisoning of the
> general population by lead. This lead came from a completely
> unexpected
> source, their plumbing. The excellent plumbing systems of the
> Romans was
> responsible in part to their great success by providing sanitary
> conditions to their
> towns and cities and there by preventing out breaks of disease
> that plagued any
> large group of people who tried to live together in that era. Can
> we be seeing
> the beginnings of problems of our own? Are these substances we use
> to make our
> lives healthier and more productive going to be part of a study of
> some
> future civilization citing these chemicals as contributing to our
> own decline? I
> have few if any answers but lots of questions.
>
> Moon
>
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: Fri Dec 31 2004 - 11:27:47 CST