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Tiny amounts of chemicals found in food and the environment are affecting the gender behavior of preschool children. A new study by doctors and scientists in the Netherlands shows that normal levels of PCBs and dioxins are “gender-benders” that affect human and animal sexuality. Wildlife species, from seagulls and alligators to fish and turtles, are turning into hermaphrodites. In the children in the study, the chemicals caused girls to play with guns and pretend to be soldiers, and boys to play with dolls and dress up in female clothes.
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A two-week-old baby in Los Angeles has already been exposed to more toxic air pollution than the U.S. government says is an acceptable cancer risk over a lifetime. A study of California air pollution by the National Environmental Trust says that even if a child moves away from California, or if the air has been cleaned up by the time he or she reaches adulthood, “the potential (cancer) risk that a child rapidly accumulates in California from simply breathing will not go away.”
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Pollution in southern Asia produces a brown haze made up ofsoot, particles, aerosols and other pollutants that affectsrainfall and farming, and causes respiratory disease inhundreds of thousands of people. “The haze is the result offorest fires, the burning of agricultural wastes, dramaticincreases in the burning of fossil fuels in vehicles,industries and power stations, and emissions from millionsof inefficient cookers burning wood, cow dung and other’bio-fuels,'” says Dr. Klaus Toepfer, of the UN EnvironmentProgram (UNEP). “There are also global implications, notleast because a pollution parcel like this, which stretches[two miles] high, can travel halfway round the globe in aweek.”
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The Army Corps of Engineers’ is dumping toxic sludge into the Potomac River, which is a designated American Heritage river. According to an internal Environmental Protection Agency document, fish are not being harmed because the sludge causes them to flee the area. That way, they escape fishermen too, so, according to the EPA, toxic sludge is actually good for fish. The document says it is not a “ridiculous possibility” that a discharge “actually protects the fish in that they are not inclined to bite (and get eaten by humans) but they go ahead with their upstream movement and egg laying.”
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