I’ve been pondering this post for a good while, and a story in today’s paper prompted me to finally get something down in pixels.
New research from the University of Rochester in the US, published in the International Journal of Andrology, says that chemicals used in plastics are feminising boys. The chemicals, phthalates, mimic estrogen, the hormone that makes females female. Now, women also have a small level of testosterone, and men naturally have a small level of estrogen – so the pathways to process the opposite-gender hormone already exist in our bodies.
The plastics industry says phthalates are safe, but the European Union has banned many of them from being used in cosmetics, teething rings, and toys.
But – are they still in the plastics that wrap our food? Line the tins that we store food in? Plastic furniture? Plastic shoes? PVC Flooring? The chemicals are often used to soften plastic – so yes, they are present in all these items.
The research team, led by the head of obstetrics and gynaecology at the university, Dr Shanna Swann, tested urine samples from pregnant women in the 28th week or pregnancy, for traces of the chemicals. The group of mothers had 74 boys and 71 girls. When the children were aged 4 – 7 years old, the mothers were contacted again and asked about the childrens’ personalities, the toys they played with, and the activities they preferred to do.
The researchers think that the chemicals make significant changes in the babies’ brains at critical periods in their in-utero development. They are also concerned that this is one of the reasons that male fertility rates have been dropping consistently, and worryingly, since WW2.
The study also said that the girls were not affected by the chemicals.
Well perhaps their personalities and preferences were not affected – but I’d be really interested to know how many of the girls were affected by early puberty? How many of all the children had unhealthy weight patterns?
Because I’ve known about the estrogen effect of plastics on foods for a few years now, I changed all my family’s food storage to glass about five years ago. None of our food is stored, or ever cooked, in plastic. Well I say none, but as I’m thinking here, I have frozen peas in plastic, rice in a plastic bag, my herbs are in a plastic bottle, the keyboard I’m typing on is plastic, probably there’s plastic in the laminate on my desktop, and the arms of my chair, and possibly even in the fabric covering my chair, in the earbuds of my ipod, in the hairclip holding my hair up. I’m not a scientist so I don’t know if all these plastics contain phthalates, but it’s clear that plastic is everywhere.
There is a lot of research around a plastic called BPA, and its effects on health. BPA is used to make polycarbonate plastic, which is found in items like CDs and DVDs, cars, sports equipment, and – yes, food and drink containers; it’s also used in epoxy resins which make things like paints, glues, coatings, and protective liners in food cans. Industry sources say it’s inert, and poses no known risks to human health. Other research has looked at how BPA affects the way our genes express – that is, which genes are turned on and which are turned off. Research with agouti mice indicates that BPA has the effect of turning on the genes that cause excess adipose tissue – body fat.
And that brings me to the real point of my post, because if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I am interested in the distorted thinking and perceptions around women and our bodies and how we “should” be.
What I’ve been thinking recently is that perhaps the “obesity crisis” (for all its distorted statistics), particularly in children, could really be showing us is that the children who are obese may well be like the canary down the mine – the early warning system that something catastrophic is ahead of us, if we don’t take care. Yes, the quality of the food they eat has an impact, but surely also the unseen toxins in the forms of microscopic chemical residues are also having an impact?
Our reductionist, break-everything-into-small-pieces-so-we-can-understand-how-it-works culture, is in many ways, itself broken. Children now are being born with many digestive problems which will not only impact on their quality of life, but also shorten their lives. Why? Because their mothers and fathers have compromised health. How much is that health impacted by the plastics in our food and our environment?
The study by Dr Swann and her associates is hopefully going to help us all take a long hard look at the impact of these substances in our food supply. Public pressure supporting scientific findings managed to get the lead out of petrol, for the sake of our children. Can we do it again with this research?
Meanwhile, of course and as ever, tapping is a powerful tool in helping our bodies deal with toxin overload.
