| Home Page | gf@green.net.au |
Chemical Toxins
Poisoning the Future:
Impacts of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals on Wildlife and Human Health
by Michelle Allsopp, David Santillo and Paul Johnston. Greenpeace Exeter Lab. 1997
Introduction
Thousands of man-made chemicals have been released into the environment
in vast quantities since the chemical industry began to boom in the 1950s.
This has brought many, often unforeseeable, problems for the environment.
Only very recently evidence of a potentially huge threat has been unfolding
- that of endocrine disruption – the disruption of hormone systems in
wildlife and humans by man-made chemicals.
If you believe that synthetic chemicals are necessarty to reduce crop losses -
"In the United States, despite the use of pesticides, 35% of potential crops are lost to insects, diseases and weeds. In 1945 before synthetic pesticides came into use, crop losses were 33%."
Dr. David Pimentel, Cornell University
Background Statement on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs),
by International POPs Elimination Network
Extract
(POPs) are carbon-based chemical compounds and mixtures that include
industrial chemicals like PCBs, pesticides like DDT and unwanted wastes
like dioxins. POPs are primarily products and by-products of human industry
that are of relatively recent origin.
POPs released to the environment can travel through air and water to regions
far distant from their original sources. POPs can concentrate in living
organisms, including humans, to levels with the potential to injure human
health and/or the environment even in regions far from where they are
used or released.... ...POPs are persistent in the environment — they
resist degradation through physical, chemical, or biological processes;...