Sunday, January 27, 2008
Feminization
A new show this fall on HBO mentioned something in passing that caught my attention. A doctor of one of the characters blamed claimed his health issues were due to increased environmental estrogens. This doctor blamed a host of problems on this increased estrogen; early menstruation in young women, decreased mobility of sperm, even breast cancer. I got curious and hit google.
I found this and this . According to these sources plastics are responsible for causing estrogen-like effects not only in people, but in animals too; causing male alligators to have small penises, and causing infertility in male panthers.
Odd? Yes definitely. But true? I’m not convinced. So I went straight to the source I trust most when it comes to science; Pubmed. I determined the culprit is a compound called bisphenol-A. I intend to research this further but I have trouble accessing fulltext articles from home. More tomorrow……..
