Why boys are turning into girls!
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Moldleg333
Nov 15, 2009, 4:02:43 PM11/15/09
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/geoffrey-lean/6418553/Why-boys-are-turning-into-girls.html
Why boys are turning into girls
November 15, 2009
Gender-bending chemicals are largely exempt from new EU regulations,
warns Geoffrey Lean.
Published: 7:00PM BST 23 Oct 2009
Girls will be girls and boys will be girls: everyday 'gender-bending'
chemicals are feminising increasing numbers of babies Photo: Getty
Creative
Here's something rather rotten from the State of Denmark. Its
government yesterday unveiled official research showing that two-year-
old children are at risk from a bewildering array of gender-bending
chemicals in such everyday items as waterproof clothes, rubber boots,
bed linen, food, nappies, sunscreen lotion and moisturising cream.
The 326-page report, published by the environment protection agency,
is the latest piece in an increasingly alarming jigsaw. A picture is
emerging of ubiquitous chemical contamination driving down sperm
counts and feminising male children all over the developed world. And
anti-pollution measures and regulations are falling far short of
getting to grips with it.
Related Articles
Carbon dioxide: we're already over the safe limit
Maldives cabinet makes a splash
Sperm counts are falling so fast that young men are less fertile than
their fathers and produce only a third as much, proportionately, as
hamsters. And gender-bending chemicals are increasingly being blamed
for the mystery of the "lost boys": babies who should normally be male
who have been born as girls instead.
The Danish government set out to find out how much contamination from
gender-bending chemicals a two-year-old child was exposed to every
day. It concluded that a child could be "at critical risk" from just a
few exposures to high levels of the substances, such as from rubber
clogs, and imperilled by the amount it absorbed from sources ranging
from food to sunscreens.
The results build on earlier studies showing that British children
have higher levels of gender-bending chemicals in their blood than
their parents or grandparents. Indeed WWF (formerly the World Wildlife
Fund), which commissioned the older research, warned that the
chemicals were so widespread that "there is very little, if anything,
individuals can do to prevent contamination of themselves and their
families." Prominent among them are dioxins, PVC, flame retardants,
phthalates (extensively used to soften plastics) and the now largely
banned PCBs, one and a half million tons of which were used in
countless products from paints to electrical equipment.
Young boys, like those in the Danish study, could end up producing
less sperm and developing feminised behaviour. Research at Rotterdam's
Erasmus University found that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs
and dioxins were more likely to play with dolls and tea sets and dress
up in female clothes.
And it is in the womb that babies are most vulnerable; a study of
umbilical cords from British mothers found that every one contained
hazardous chemicals. Scientists at the University of Rochester in New
York discovered that boys born to women exposed to phthalates had
smaller penises and other feminisation of the genitals.
The contamination may also offer a clue to a mysterious shift in the
sex of babies. Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls: it is
thought to be nature's way of making up for the fact that men were
more likely to be killed hunting or in conflict. But the proportion of
females is rising, so much so that some 250,000 babies who
statistically should have been boys have ended up as girls in Japan
and the United States alone. In Britain, the discrepancy amounts to
thousands of babies a year.
A Canadian Indian community living on ancestral lands at the eastern
tip of Lake Huron, hemmed in by one of the biggest agglomerations of
chemical factories on earth, gives birth to twice as many girls as
boys. It's the same around Seveso in Italy, contaminated with dioxins
from a notorious accident in the 1970s, and among Russian pesticide
workers. And there's more evidence from places as far apart as Israel
and Taiwan, Brazil and the Arctic.
Yet gender-benders are largely exempt from new EU regulations
controlling hazardous chemicals. Britain, then under Tony Blair's
premiership, was largely responsible for this – restricting their
inclusion in the first draft of the legislation, and then causing even
what was included to be watered down.Confidential documents show that
it did so after pressure from George W Bush's administration, which
protested that US exports "could be impacted".
Now the Danish government is planning to lobby to have the rules
toughened up. It is particularly concerned by other studies which show
that gender-bending chemicals acting together have far worse effects
than the expected sum of their individual impacts. It wants this to be
reflected in the regulations, citing its discovery of the many sources
to which the two-year-olds are exposed – modern slings and arrows, as
it were, of outrageous fortune.
Why boys are turning into girls
November 15, 2009
Gender-bending chemicals are largely exempt from new EU regulations,
warns Geoffrey Lean.
Published: 7:00PM BST 23 Oct 2009
Girls will be girls and boys will be girls: everyday 'gender-bending'
chemicals are feminising increasing numbers of babies Photo: Getty
Creative
Here's something rather rotten from the State of Denmark. Its
government yesterday unveiled official research showing that two-year-
old children are at risk from a bewildering array of gender-bending
chemicals in such everyday items as waterproof clothes, rubber boots,
bed linen, food, nappies, sunscreen lotion and moisturising cream.
The 326-page report, published by the environment protection agency,
is the latest piece in an increasingly alarming jigsaw. A picture is
emerging of ubiquitous chemical contamination driving down sperm
counts and feminising male children all over the developed world. And
anti-pollution measures and regulations are falling far short of
getting to grips with it.
Related Articles
Carbon dioxide: we're already over the safe limit
Maldives cabinet makes a splash
Sperm counts are falling so fast that young men are less fertile than
their fathers and produce only a third as much, proportionately, as
hamsters. And gender-bending chemicals are increasingly being blamed
for the mystery of the "lost boys": babies who should normally be male
who have been born as girls instead.
The Danish government set out to find out how much contamination from
gender-bending chemicals a two-year-old child was exposed to every
day. It concluded that a child could be "at critical risk" from just a
few exposures to high levels of the substances, such as from rubber
clogs, and imperilled by the amount it absorbed from sources ranging
from food to sunscreens.
The results build on earlier studies showing that British children
have higher levels of gender-bending chemicals in their blood than
their parents or grandparents. Indeed WWF (formerly the World Wildlife
Fund), which commissioned the older research, warned that the
chemicals were so widespread that "there is very little, if anything,
individuals can do to prevent contamination of themselves and their
families." Prominent among them are dioxins, PVC, flame retardants,
phthalates (extensively used to soften plastics) and the now largely
banned PCBs, one and a half million tons of which were used in
countless products from paints to electrical equipment.
Young boys, like those in the Danish study, could end up producing
less sperm and developing feminised behaviour. Research at Rotterdam's
Erasmus University found that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs
and dioxins were more likely to play with dolls and tea sets and dress
up in female clothes.
And it is in the womb that babies are most vulnerable; a study of
umbilical cords from British mothers found that every one contained
hazardous chemicals. Scientists at the University of Rochester in New
York discovered that boys born to women exposed to phthalates had
smaller penises and other feminisation of the genitals.
The contamination may also offer a clue to a mysterious shift in the
sex of babies. Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls: it is
thought to be nature's way of making up for the fact that men were
more likely to be killed hunting or in conflict. But the proportion of
females is rising, so much so that some 250,000 babies who
statistically should have been boys have ended up as girls in Japan
and the United States alone. In Britain, the discrepancy amounts to
thousands of babies a year.
A Canadian Indian community living on ancestral lands at the eastern
tip of Lake Huron, hemmed in by one of the biggest agglomerations of
chemical factories on earth, gives birth to twice as many girls as
boys. It's the same around Seveso in Italy, contaminated with dioxins
from a notorious accident in the 1970s, and among Russian pesticide
workers. And there's more evidence from places as far apart as Israel
and Taiwan, Brazil and the Arctic.
Yet gender-benders are largely exempt from new EU regulations
controlling hazardous chemicals. Britain, then under Tony Blair's
premiership, was largely responsible for this – restricting their
inclusion in the first draft of the legislation, and then causing even
what was included to be watered down.Confidential documents show that
it did so after pressure from George W Bush's administration, which
protested that US exports "could be impacted".
Now the Danish government is planning to lobby to have the rules
toughened up. It is particularly concerned by other studies which show
that gender-bending chemicals acting together have far worse effects
than the expected sum of their individual impacts. It wants this to be
reflected in the regulations, citing its discovery of the many sources
to which the two-year-olds are exposed – modern slings and arrows, as
it were, of outrageous fortune.
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