As one example, within 6 years of the creation of PCBs in 1929, they had spread through the ecosystem, carried on wind and water, to the point where they were already contaminating the tissues of wildlife in many places. 
 

March 17, 2000 - Nations Gather in Bonn to Negotiate POPs Treaty
Breast-milk contamination (special page). 
 

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Following are my notes, by chapter: 

HAND ME DOWN POISONS 
Chemical companies are putting hundreds of new synthetic chemicals into the market each year – far faster than toxicologists and regulatory agencies are able to develop new  tests to detect them and assay them. 

The greater the amount of PCBs in umbilical cord blood, the poorer the scores have been on neurological development tests (short-term memory etc.=IQ).  Study done by Sandra and Joseph Jacobson: mothers who had eaten 2-3 fish meals from Lake Ontario per month:  babies were born sooner, weighed less, and had smaller heads than from mothers who did not eat the lake's fish 

Tissue analyses of troubled wildlife species (reproductive problems -- abandoned nests, disinterest in mating, deformed young) revealed some chemicals: DDT, dieldrin, chlordane, and lindane (pesticides) and PCBs (toxicologists knew how to measure these particular chemicals and they were least expensive to analyze, there are others unknown). Shockingly high concentrations reported in the fat in human breast milk. 

CHEMICAL MESSENGERS 
Tiny amount of hormone can make dramatic difference - amounts such as one part per trillion (likened to a drop of gin in a train of 660 tank cars of tonic). 

135 drops of estradiol in 1,000 tank cars vs 
100 drops of testosterone in 1,000 tank cars        [This equals the different hormone exposure of a  female fetus that develops between 2 males in the pea-pod-like mouse womb vs one that is not between 2 males] 
Just this tiny variation in hormone levels made a lifelong behavioral difference in clone-similar strain of mice (the female fetus between two males became  aggressive, unattractive female) 

For normal development, hormonal cues must be given at the right moment in early fetal development as tissues and organs make now-or-never choices about the direction of development 

It’s not just the X/Y chromosome carried by the sperm that makes the difference – the Y male-sex-determining gene is only the first part: at 7 weeks, Y throws the switch to initiate the development of the testes. The remainder of process is driven by hormone signals from the testes. –  if they have not developed, then nothing. 

HORMONE HAVOC 
DES:  In addition to the very high rate of physical damage, the use of DES has resulted in major depression, anorexia, phobias, anxiety, plus other effects worthy of note. 

Drugs and chemicals that have little effect on adults can cause serious and permanent damage to a baby during its rapid prenatal development. 

The DES experience made it clear that the human body could mistake a man-made chemical for a hormone. 

50 WAYS TO LOSE YOUR FERTILITY 
Male roosters exposed to DDT = underdeveloped testes & no big comb or wattles 

Hormone receptors in the body work like a "lock and key" with hormones, but chemical can bind with the receptor instead.  Also the agent in the blood that soaks up excess estrogen in the blood of the fetus and mother does NOT work to soak up the synthetic chemical – leaving all the synthetic chemicals to act as estrogen mimics. 

There are naturally occurring substances in plants that also mimic estrogens. But the body can break down and excrete plant estrogens in one day, but many of the man-made compounds do not break down but accumulate in the body, exposing humans & animals to low-level but long-term exposure for years. This chronic hormone exposure is unprecedented in our evolutionary experience. 

Another newly discovered factor is androgen blockers,  (vs. estrogen mimics, which have been studied for 2 decades).

The adrenal glands are hurt more by man-made compounds than any other organ, then thyroid gland (depressed thyroid levels are linked to breast cancer as is also increased estrogen exposure) 

TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH 
Chemicals manufactured on one continent can travel to others thousands of miles away.  Persistent chemicals tend to go through a kind of distillation process, tending to go from warmer to cooler areas:  vaporizing, being borne on the wind and into the water until they wind up in the fat of some animal and then are concentrated, climbing up the food web till the levels are millions of times higher than at their entry into the web. (Each animal that eats contaminated prey retains and concentrates the contaminants in its own fat stores.) 

PCBs were introduced in 1929; already by 1935 they were showing up as a contaminant in wildlife (a 1964 study including tissue samples taken in 1935 uncovered this).  The US banned manufacture of PCBs in 1976, but 3.4 billion pounds had been produced and set loose by then. 

PCBs and other chemical troublemakers are characterized by: extreme stability, volatility, & an affinity for fat.  They vaporize and ride the winds to distant lands, attach to fat in foods 

Toxaphene – heavily used in cotton fields for a long time because it disappeared quickly from the fields; but it just vaporized and moved elsewhere. 

During breast-feeding, human infants are exposed to higher concentrations of these chemicals than at any subsequent time in their lives. In just 6 months of breast feeding, a baby in the US and Europe gets the maximum recommended lifetime dose of dioxin, which rides through the food web like PCBs and DDT. The same breast feeding baby gets 5 times the allowable level of PCBs set by international health standards for a 150-pound adult.  It is particularly severe in the high Arctic, where many people survive on the wild food of land and sea.  Babies there take in 7 times more PCBs than US or  Canada: chronic ear infections, immune system abnormalities, do not produce antibodies when vaccinated, etc. 

indigenous people there do not understand contamination, think perhaps it is just an animal rights ploy. 

News that their breast milk contains chemicals has left some women frightened and desperate. One mother decided to stop nursing in an effort to protect her new baby. After several weeks of bottle-feeding the baby her only alternative,  coffee-mate mixed with water, the baby had to be hospitalized. 

A SINGLE HIT 
There are studies from hundreds of research efforts – but synthesis of the information from the studies almost never gets done, for lack of funding or resultant prestige!!! How absurd! 

Dioxin is an inadvertent by-product of manufacture of chlorine containing chemicals such as pesticides & wood preservatives, bleaching paper, incinerating plastics & paper, burning fossil fuels 
¨ furans— 

Male reproductive system is 100 times more sensitive to dioxin during early development than in adulthood. 

HERE THERE & EVERYWHERE 
In 1988 Corning changed plastic resin to make lab tubes less brittle (did not bother to change catalog number) - caused breast-cancer experiment cells to rampantly multiply. This toxicity was only noticed at all because these particular researchers were conducting a very rarely demanding type of experiment with estrogen-sensitive cells. When questioned, Corning would not reveal the chemical content of the new resin, even after meeting with the researchers and learning of the health dangers they (Corning) were creating. Corning refused to help, claiming "trade secret".  But these 2 researchers, although the easiest thing for them to do would have been to just switch brands of lab tubes and continue with their experiments without investigating the new toxicity of Corning’s lab tubes, decided to investigate and find out what the chemical was that was leaking out of the plastic and causing rampant proliferation of the breast cancer cells. After 2 years’ work they discovered it was p-nonylphenol, one of a family of synthetic chemicals known as alkylphenols.  Mfrs add nonylphenols to polystyrene and PVC. 

Polystyrene may or may not contain nonylphenols, depending on the mfr. 

Food processing and packaging industry uses PVCs that contain alkylphenols. 

Nonylphenol contamination has been found in water that passed through PVC tubing. Nonoxynol-9 contraceptive breaks down in animal’s bodies, creating nonylphenol. 

In 1990, there were 600 million # of alkylphenol polyethoxylates used globally (450 million in US). Consumer products containing them (industrial detergents, pesticides, and personal care products) are not themselves estrogenic, but bacteria in animals’ bodies, in the environment, or in sewage treatment plants degrade them, creating nonylphenol and other chemicals that do mimic estrogens. 

A Stanford research team found that polycarbonate (giant bottled water jugs) leaches another estrogen mimic at levels that prompt estrogenic response in cells in the lab. (bisphenol-A) 

At time of writing, there was no funding available to do further research to investigate biologically active plastics and other hormone-disrupting synthetic chemicals. 

England: rivers there provide drinking water: male fish in the rivers not developing sexual characteristics. Research pointing to detergents, plasticizers, and pesticides. 

85% of US food cans are now lined with plastics leaching bisphenol-A; contents of lined cans were tested, and "found stunningly high concentrations in food, sometimes 27 times higher than the levels Stanford research reported caused breast cancer cells to proliferate". 

Synthetic chemicals that disrupt hormones do not all act like estrogens.  And it is not just estrogens, but also male hormones that are interfered with. Furthermore, some of the "estrogenic" chemicals block the receptors for androgen. 

Manufacturers withhold information about ingredients saying "trade secrets" "proprietary information"; this is a principle that is far more rigorously protected by legal precedent and the courts than is the public’s right to know. 

Some persistent chemicals (DDT) have been phased out and replaced by less persistent, which still disrupt hormones but do not leave telltale signs in body tissue, which means that it is harder to assess exposure. Also there is the question of how many more hormone disruptors remain to be discovered. 

Even if a synthetic chemical estrogen mimic is at a low level in the blood (as pointed out by "pooh-poohing" chemical company supporters), dangers are increased because natural hormone restrainers (binders) in the blood do not act on synthetics, leaving it all free and active.  Most of us carry several hundred persistent chemicals in our body, including many that have been identified as hormone disruptors. We carry them at levels several thousand times higher than natural levels of free, biologically active, estrogen. 
 

CHRONICLE OF LOSS 
A mammal mother draws down the fat stores of her body, including the persistent toxic chemicals she has accumulated and stored over a lifetime in her body fat, into her milk. Thus the load of decades’ worth of contaminants is passed on to her baby in a very short time.  For example, by the end of its 2-year nursing period, a baby whale has acquired a toxic load that, related to its size, far exceeds that of the mother. 

Lake Apopka, Florida - chemical spill in 1980 - although the lake water is clean now, poisons are still circulating in the food web and causing havoc in the animals that live there;  alligators and even turtles (who eat only plants and are therefore getting much less contamination) are showing "intersex" symptoms. 

Great Lakes: by eating gulls, eagles accumulate concentrations of contaminants 20 times higher than if they had eaten only fish. 

With reduced use of DDT, chicks are beginning to survive that previously would have died because of DDT’s eggshell-thinning effect, Now physical and behavioral abnormalities emerge: crossed bills, missing eyes, malformed feet, disturbed reproductive patterns. Minks and otters in lakes and European rivers disappeared - sensitive to PCBs and other industrial chemicals. 

ALTERED DESTINIES 
Lab rats fed on 30% Lake Ontario fish (result would be same with other polluted sources) for 20 days showed behavioral changes: No difference to controls as long as life is pleasant and uneventful, but as soon as any sort of negative event occurs, they show a "hyper reactive" reaction, "every little stress is magnified". Jacobson’s study of children bears out the human correlation. 

This showed up not only in rats exposed during critical stages in the womb but also adult rats fed Lake Ontario salmon. And also found it in the offspring of these adults and in the second generation. 

DEFENDING OURSELVES 
Breast feeding: benefits vs. the fact that nursing babies take in 10 to 40 times higher dose of contaminants than the daily exposure of an adult. 

It is indeed tragic that breast-feeding is the only efficient way to remove these persistent chemicals from the human body. 

Older women having their first child would transmit highest levels of contaminants. 

Other: Wash your hands frequently to avoid taking in contaminants that have settled on surfaces. Avoid pesticides. Golfing is dangerous (heavy pesticides). Give babies toys made of bare wood or natural fibers. Make sure they do not suck or chew on plastic. 

We must change the thinking behind manufacture of chemicals.