Why you should/shouldn't read this book - You should read this book if you are interested in the environment and want to learn more about the chemistry that makes it up. This book is very scientific and can sometimes feel a little boring but is also filled with powerful, haunting, and dramatic words that make you think, and sometimes make you want to go beyond thinking. This book encourages and brings hope. This book raises awareness and is a must read! Below is a chapter by chapter summary that I had to complete for an assignment.
Chapter 1 Omens - This chapter introduces a major theme found throughout the book and that is hormonal disruption. The chapter is filled with many short happenings in a variety of different areas. It opens in the Gulf Coast of Florida in 1952, observing bald eagles and suggesting that contaminants might have been interfering with the hormonal control of their development. It then analyzes populations and mating behavior and several different species in several different locations, including human male sperm count, and views these instances with a current scientific understanding that abnormalities in hormone control were possibly caused by contaminants.
Chapter 2 Hand-Me-Down Poisons - Chapter two takes the reader deeper into the mind of Dr. Theo Colborn and walks us through some of her thoughts and discoveries about these possible contaminants. She illustrates the Great Lakes in the United States and explains how a breakthrough happened when she linked all of her research and other research she studied with a common source; endocrine disruption.
Chapter 3 Chemical Messengers - Chapter three covers the world of Frederick vom Saal who is a biologist at the University of Missouri. In his research, he explores the impact of tiny variations in hormone exposure on the development of fetal mice, and ultimately on adult characteristics of those mice when they mature. Through this work, he discovered that natural hormonal gradients around each fetus in the womb of a mouse alter the development of its neighbors and suggests that this finding can lay the groundwork for understanding how tiny variations in hormone-mimicking contaminants can also alter development.
Chapter 4 Hormone Havoc - This chapter dives into a case where the hormonal control of development is altered. It showcased diethylstilbestrol, or DES, a synthetic estrogen invented in 1938 and subsequently used by physicians to manage difficult pregnancies. Time has shows that it caused severe damage to individuals exposed to DES when their mother was treated while they were in the womb. The symptoms didn't take effect until after puberty, but included rare cancers and damaged fallopian tubes.
Chapter 5 Fifty Ways to Lose Your Fertility - This chapter explores the relationship between hormones and fetal development. It compares the chemical makeup of DES and DDT and explains how a fetus can often mistake these as the hormones estrogen and testosterone. Plant fertility was also discussed and it was shown that plant estrogens, or phytoestrogens, have the ability to bind with animal estrogen receptors, affecting animal fertility. The chapter ends by describing the work of Dr. Earl Gray. He studied how some synthetic chemicals disrupt male development by interacting with the receptor that normally binds testosterone, the androgen receptor. We learn from Gray that hormone disruption is not limited to the estrogen system and that virtually every hormone-receptor interaction is vulnerable.
Chapter 6 To The Ends of The Earth - This chapter meticulously documents the journey of a polychlorinated biphenyl molecule from it from its production in a Monsanto chemical plant near Anniston, Alabama, to its entry into a polar bear in the Arctic. This is a known endocrine disruptor that is known to be potent and powerful, and it's also present in every ecosystem on earth. The chapter explains how the global transportation of these "persistent organic pollutants" is especially problematic for people who live in cold regions of the planet, like the Arctic, as they depend more upon locally available food like plants and wildlife.
Chapter 7 A Single Hit - This chapter asks and answers the question, "How much of a synthetic chemical does it take to disrupt hormone levels and do lifelong damage?" The reader is presented with many different examples of when small amounts of Dioxin have had great impacts on contamination and reproductive problems. The author indicates that an exceedingly tiny amount, so small and so brief that it defies the imagination to contemplate, is enough to alter the course of development if exposure takes place in the womb. Our lesson from this chapter is that low dose vulnerability exists.
Chapter 8 Here, There, and Everywhere - This chapter opens our eyes to the wonderful world that surrounds us, and that is also filled to the brim with hormone disruptors. They're everywhere! It describes a discovery by Dr. Ana Soto and Dr. Carlos Sonnenschein that nonylphenol, a common additive to certain plastics, binds with the estrogen receptor and stimulates estrogenic responses in cells and living animals. The chapter also shows that the basic building block of polycarbonate plastic, a compound called bisphenol A (BPA), also increases breast cancer cell proliferation rates. These compounds are all around us (!!!) and as a result, so is exposure to hormone disrupting compounds.
Chapter 9 Chronicle of Loss - This chapter chronicles more of the events from chapter 1. Among the examples covered are Beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River between the US and Canada, Florida panthers, seals in Europe, alligators in Lake Apopka, Florida, and frogs around the world. This chapter highlights that these disruptions are not just theoretical, they are real and they happen everyday in the natural world.
Chapter 10 Altered Destinies - This chapter brings all of this science back to the people. It questions the reader directly, and asks us what do we as human have to do with anything? What does this mean for us? The chapter explains that the answers aren't entirely clear, but all signs point to serious risk. It also explains that the risks we see in animals are risks for humans, and credits Rachel Carson in her book "Silent Spring" for introducing that idea. This chapter also battles the people who say there is no evidence of the damage being described and explains how they cling to the idea of scientific uncertainty to keep their malpractices. In fact, the risk is probably greater than we could ever realize, as most of the data takes into account high dosage cases and there's a serious lack of studies going on for background exposure and low dosage exposure.
Chapter 11 Beyond Cancer - It seems as if all we hear about in the medical world is cancer and possible carcinogens. This chapter points out that cancer is killing individuals at a rate that should be alarming to people, but we tend to ignore the other "stuff." Cancer kills adults for the most part, while hormone disruption derails development early in life, putting at risk the ability of individuals to participate fully in society. This chapter stresses that we should try to protect against these disruptors with as much vigor as we protect ourselves from cancer.
Chapter 12 Defending Ourselves - This is a chapter of choice. It outlines our circumstances and the choices we can take. We must protect ourselves and we must protect our children. One option given was public policy. We need policy focused on avoiding unnecessary uses of pesticides and reducing intake of contaminated food. Certain practices at home can help too, like not microwaving in plastic unless you are absolutely certain that the plastic does not leach endocrine disrupting compounds into the food it contains. While these things are far from perfect, they are a start and we need options to make progress.
Chapter 13 Loomings - This chapter is about the future, and the uncertainties it holds. Only time will tell the long term effects of what we're doing currently. And although significant data on human exposure to endocrine disruptors is lacking, the evidence stands with animals, and the author stresses that we're next in line. Are falling SAT scores linked to intrauterine exposure? What about global declines in sperm count? Or increases in societal levels of aggression. All these endpoints--cognitive, behavioral, reproductive--are shown vulnerable in animal studies to exposure to endocrine disruption. The chapter holds these to be possibilities, what can we conclude for people?
Chapter 14 Flying Blind - This chapter gives the reader a chance to step back from the details of endocrine disruptors and ask, "Why are we in this situation and how can we get out?" The chapter points out that the recent technological growth in the past 30 years has been incredible for mankind but we were in no way prepared for the risks that came along with it. The earth is no overflowing with contaminants and no area is left without them. This introduces a huge gap for humans in our knowledge of how the world works and we need to figure it out. We're going into the future blind. I love this quote, "As we work to create a future where children can be born free of chemical contamination, our scientific knowledge and technological expertise will be crucial. Nothing, however, will be more important to human well-being and survival than the wisdom to appreciate that however great our knowledge, our ignorance is also vast. In this ignorance we have taken huge risks and inadvertently gambled with survival."
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