Panel Report Lacks Bottom Line on Hormone-like Chemicals
A long-awaited report released last week on the health effects of hormonally active agents, also known as endocrine disrupters, calls for more research to determine the ultimate safety of this group of chemicals.
The report, from a panel of experts assembled by National Research Council (NRC), acknowledged that high-dose exposures to endocrine disrupters can be harmful. But, it concluded, the effects of low-dose exposures — those most germane to the public — remain unestablished.
The report raises more questions than it answers, the most compelling question being: What’s the bottom line? “It is easy to call for more research without any evidence of danger,” says Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health. “But that doesn’t help consumers who want to know what’s safe.”
While on its surface the NRC report appears equivocal, a closer look may actually yield the most critical answers.
Hormonally active agents (HAAs) have been hypothesized to cause a range of adverse human health effects, including declining sperm counts and cancers, by acting as or interfering with sex hormones. Reproductive and developmental defects in certain wildlife do appear to have been caused by high levels of HAAs in contaminated areas.
Some laboratory studies have shown that large concentrations of some HAAs can be harmful to animals. High-dose exposures of these agents to pregnant women have also produced birth defects. Yet what evidence is there to conclude that humans, who face relatively low exposures to HAAs, are in danger?
Virtually none. As the panel’s report tells us, no credible evidence supports the allegation that HAAs cause breast, testicular, prostate, or endometrial cancer. Nor does evidence indicate that so-called endocrine disrupters are linked to immune-system disturbances or reproductive disorders such as global declines in sperm counts (a trend that is itself questionable).
Most of the concern about HAAs has focused on synthetic chemicals such as those found in plastics, pesticides and cleaning products. But endocrine active agents also include substances found in the plants we eat, drug therapies, and the body’s own hormones.
It is difficult to distinguish the effects of suspected endocrine disrupters from the many other hormonal influences on the body. It is also unclear just how HAAs would exert their adverse effects, if indeed they were harmful.
The endocrine disrupter hypothesis is by no means new. The NRC panel itself has been investigating HAAs for the past four years. But, as is the case with many concerns about trace levels of chemicals in the environment, the issue of endocrine disruption is intensely political. This fact played out even in the panel’s deliberations, and it may be one of the reasons that the safety of HAAs remains unresolved.
In the face of such well-established risks as cigarette smoking, driving without one’s seat belt in place, and alcohol abuse, some scientists and policy makers are questioning the attention being devoted to HAAs.
“Given that there is virtually no consistent or convincing human evidence of increases in adverse health effects related to suspected endocrine modulators,” says Dr. Daland R. Juberg, a consultant with the International Center for Toxicology and Medicine, “the call for such extensive research seems disproportionately out of touch with the weight of scientific evidence.”
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