Endocrine Disruptors Essay

In this experiment, contractions of the earthworm gut are measured in an organ bath with a force transducer. The effect of neurotransmitters and ionic concentrations on contraction strength and rate will be investigated.

The decisions that Gina McCarthy, the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, makes have a direct impact on the health of the nation. Gina and her agency ensure the safety and cleanliness of the environment through standard setting, monitoring levels of chemicals and pollutants, and making sure these standards are enforced throughout all levels of industry. One group of industrial chemicals that have been receiving attention recently are the environmental endocrine disrupters (EED), such as DDT and Bispehnol A, that can be found in a wide range of products that Americans use in their everyday life. From household cleaners, food and beverage containers, beauty products, and even children’s toys, these chemicals are widely

The above research shows that endocrine disruptors may pose the greatest risk during prenatal and early postnatal development when organ and neural systems are developing. Additionally, the consequences in animals linked to early exposure may not be apparent until later in life, but EDC’s can affect subfertility, premature reproductive senescence, and cancer. These issues are our greatest concern, and alternative precautionary strategies must be adopted, which including seeking to eliminate or minimize unnecessary risks to the fetus, even in the absence of clear proof of harm. Some of these steps can be taken by individuals, such as lifestyle changes in women who are pregnant, and reducing exposures through the release of chemicals to the environment. However, clinicians and scientist must educate law officials and the public about the threats of endocrine disruptors in order to adverse the trends of disease and destruction throughout the

It is written by environmental zoologists Theo Colbum and John Peterson Myers, and science journalist Dianne Dumanoski. Of course, these authors are well qualified by education and experience to write such an extremely timely and thought-provoking book that is far more that just "a scientific detective story", as it claims. The book traces many highly disturbing effects of the widespread use and global distribution of specific modern synthetic chemicals which, even in exceptionally low amounts, may acutely disrupt and impair standard and expected hormone function. This is not something we can take lightly, for hormones orchestrate many things: they are the vital chemical messengers in our bodies; they orchestrate crucial stages of growth and development; and, most importantly, they form specific features of sexual differentiation to brain organization and maturation. Granted, these are not exactly well-known issues that beg the attention of the common passerby; rather, the prominence of these issues are often ignored or concealed by the US Food and Drug Administration, which takes no action to curb the use of drugs that manifest such chemicals. But why is this? OSF suggests that administrations like the FDA ignore hazards like these because most of these chemicals have no observable effects on adults. However, at relatively low levels of contamination, they may have calamitous consequences to the unborn; in  animals, they can result in disorientation of nesting and mating; and in humans they have been linked to low sperm counts and learning and behavioral

The endocrine system is a group of glands distributed throughout the human body. This group of glands secretes substances called hormones. These hormones are dumping into the bloodstream (Shier, Butler & Lewis, 2009). The endocrine system does not have a single anatomic location. It is dispersed throughout the human body. The final purpose of this process is to control, regulate, and coordinate the functioning of the human body. Some body functions can be activated or inhibited by hormones, which are secreted in very small quantities. The hormone related diseases may be due to hyper secretion, or a hypo secretion. The hormones secreted by the endocrine glands regulate growth, development and function of many tissues, and coordinate the

One way PCBs are detrimental to human health is the developmental effects that are seen in the offspring of women who were exposed to PCBs before or during pregnancy. These women in particular are at higher risk of giving birth to children that have major neurological and motor control problems, including lowered IQ and poor short-term memory. A group of children in Michigan whose mothers had been exposed to PCBs were found to have decreased birth weight and head size, lowered performance on standardized memory, psychomotor and behavioral tests, and lowered IQ (Jacobson and Jacobson 1996). Another group of women exposed to PCBs in upstate New York due to the nature of their jobs had shorter pregnancies and gave birth to children with lower birth weight. Research has also shown that women who consumed PCB-contaminated fish from Lake Ontario were found to have shortened menstrual cycles (Mendola et al 1997). PCBs are also thought to play a role in reduced sperm counts, altered sex organs, premature puberty, and changed sex ratios of

Estrogen and progesterone (progestin) are hormones used in many forms of birth control (contraception). These two hormones make up most hormonal contraceptives. Hormonal contraceptives use either:

Estrogen ( the female sex hormone ) dominance happens when there is too much estrogen in the body . For most cancers the first clinical screening involves testing of estrogen dominance . Generally

In 1954, the FDA approved growth-stimulating hormones for use in the general public, creating an opportunity to make that dream an unsettling reality (FDA 1). Not only were these synthetic drugs encouraged as a supplement during human pregnancies, but for use in livestock as well (CDC 1). Aiding in the conversion of feed to fat in animals, dramatically increasing the rate of growth, artificial growth hormones seemed like the cattleman’s miracle elixir. However, in 1971, the FDA banned the use of DES (diethylstilbestrol, synthetic estrogen) in humans, which was the primary growth hormone available for human consumption (CDC 1). Use of DES in

Chemicals are also suspected to cause breast cancer. Xenoestrogens are chemicals with estrogen-like effects, they are found in pesticides and other common industrial products. Other estrogen-like chemicals that have a stronger association with breast cancer include dieldrin and beta-hexachloraocyclohexane. Although these chemicals are very weak estrogens, one study showed that exposure to single weak-estrogen compounds isn’t a big risk but a combination of two or more chemicals result in extremely high estrogenic

Endocrine disruptors are described as “chemicals that may interfere with the body’s endocrine system and produce adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological, and immune effects in both humans and wildlife.” I read in the article related to this assignment that Congress amended “the Food Quality Protection Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1996 to require the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a plan and establish priorities to test thousands of chemicals for their potential to disrupt endocrine systems”. We need to protect our drinking water because Endocrine disruptors could be effecting it and making people sick The precautionary principle is the principle that if something could be bad don't do it. A criticism of the

Estrogen receptors: Estrogens act via two types of receptors (ERα and ERβ), which are members of a large super family of proteins that function as ligand-activated transcription factors (Katzenellenbogen and Katzenellenbogen, 1996). Both receptors have direct differentiative influences on reproductive organs and have similar binding affinity to estradiol (Kuiper et al., 1997; Drummond et al., 1999). Although, there are significant amino acid differences in the regions of these receptors that would be expected to influence transcriptional activity (Hall and McDonnell, 1999). More recently, two Estrogen-Related Receptors, (ERRα/ERR1) and (ERRβ/ERR2) have also been characterized.

The impact of certain estrogenic xenobiotics on the reproductive system development and health of animals has been clearly documented. Findings, such as ours demonstrate thathumans are also exposed at risk. As data accumulate regarding to infertility, genital tract malformations and increasing cancer rates in estrogen target tissues (especially the breast),

Endocrine disrupting chemicals also known as (EDCs) are hormonal chemicals, known for their alteration or blockage of organism’s hormones. (Trachsel, 2008) Hence, these chemicals are defined as xenobiotics, which refers to foreign bodies or agents to an organism system. (Trachsel, 2008) These EDCs found in aquatic environment have a variety of harm effects on animals, humans and or the ecosystem in general, that can differ the hemostasis due to the elimination of natural occurring hormones in animals or human bodies when they interfere with the synthesis and transportation of hormones that are responsible for growth, development and behavior. (A. Snyder, 2003) On the other hand, we have micropollutants that can found in aquatic and waste

BPS was detected in 81% of the human urine samples in the United States and in seven Asian countries with a mean concentration of 0.654 ng/mL, which was comparable to BPA (Liao, et al., 2012a). The metabolic and biological fate of BPS has not been fully examined. An in vitro study indicated that glucuronidation was the major metabolic pathway for BPS (Skledar et al., 2016). As a potential EDC, BPS has been examined in the National Toxicology Program (NTP) Tox21 High Throughput Screening (HTS) Program and was classified as an estrogen agonist with a weak affinity for the ER (Dreier et al., 2015; Huang et al., 2014). In addition, Rochester and Bolden reviewed the hormonal activities of BPS as compared with BPA (Rochester and Bolden, 2015). Seventeen studies meaursed the estrogenic activity of BPS along with BPA in the same assays using various in vitro estrogenic assays were reviewed, and the ratios of concentrations (EC50) between BPS and BPA were caculated. The average estrogenic potency for BPS versus BPA was 0.32 ± 0.28, which indicated the potency of BPS was similar to the potency of BPA (Rochester and Bolden, 2015). There is extensive evidence that affinity of a ligand for estrogen receptor (Kurbel et al., 2003; Mohideen-Abdul et al., 2017; Vakharia and Gierthy, 2000). This review also found that the potency of BPS was in the same order of magnitude of BPA regarding the androgenic, antiandrogenic, antiestrogenic, and aryl hydrocarbon