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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Apologies for any cross-posting –
thanks to Kelly Heekin of HCWH for sending this</span></font></p>
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10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'> </span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Laurie </span></font></p>
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style='font-size:12.0pt;color:navy'> </span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Dr. Pete Myers was on the National Public Radio "Living
on Earth" program this week discussing links between endocrine disruptors
and human health. The text of his interview & link to more info are
below. </span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>In Utero Chemical Exposure Linked to Obesity <br>
</span></font><font size=2 face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana'><a
href="http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=05-P13-00048&segmentID=1"><font
face=Arial><span style='font-family:Arial'>http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=05-P13-00048&segmentID=1</span></font></a></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Living on Earth is an independent media program and relies
entirely on contributions from listeners and institutions supporting public
service. Please donate now to preserve an independent environmental
voice. </span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> Air Date: Week of December 2, 2005 </span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
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</span></font><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
Arial'>Endocrine disrupting chemicals, the ones that affect the way our bodies
circulate hormones, are perhaps the most ubiquitous and the most dangerous of
the pollutants we encounter each day. Research shows that even at low levels,
these chemicals are affecting the way we develop and store fat. Host Steve
Curwood talks with Dr. Pete Myers, head of Environmental Health Sciences, about
the latest research.<br>
</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>CURWOOD: From the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios in Somerville, Massachusetts, this is Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>We are what we eat. Being fat or thin depends on what we
eat, how much we eat, how much we exercise, and our genetic makeup, right?
Well, scientists now say there may be another factor at work. Tiny amounts of
synthetic chemicals found in the environment appear to play havoc with hormones
that shape our bodies and behavior by turning genes on and off. These chemicals
are called endocrine disrupters, and new research shows a link between them and
setting the stage for obesity even before birth. Joining me is John Pete Myers.
He's the Chief Scientist and founder of Environmental Health Sciences, and
co-author of the book "Our Stolen Future," which explores the science
of endocrine disruption. Hello, sir.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>MYERS: Hello, Steve, it's great to be with you.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>CURWOOD: So, how do you reconcile the notion that these
disorders are linked to our genes, and yet you're talking about chemicals in
the environment?</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>MYERS: That's a really good question, and it basically comes
from an old understanding of what it means for a disease to be linked to a
gene. For a long time we thought that that meant heredity. You got a gene from
your parents, and it was a bad gene, and you got the disease.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>But this new science – it's been unfolding now for 30
years and it's really, really taken off now – is saying you can have the
right gene, but because of the environment it's behaving in the wrong way. It
could be diet that does it. It could be stress that does it. Or it could be an
environmental contaminant. And so what we're learning is turning on its head
this whole notion of the separation between environment and genetics.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>CURWOOD: Could you give us a "most wanted" list of
endocrine-disrupting, that is, hormone-disrupting, chemicals, and where they're
found in our everyday lives?</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>MYERS: That list, the overall list is long. The "most
wanted" list is a lot shorter. They basically fall into two categories.
There're the ones like DDT and PCBs, the polychlorinated biphenyls, that have
been around a long time. Industrial chemicals, contaminants. There's another
category which are transient which degrade in the environment fairly rapidly,
but because they are present in lots of consumer products, like cosmetics
– lipstick, eye shadow, perfume – or, like, certain types of
plastics, we're exposed to them every day. So those are the two categories.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Now I think we're learning that the perfluorinated
compounds, things that are involved in the production of Teflon, are real
problems. As are certain compounds used to make flame retardants, called the
brominated flame retardants. At the top of the list of the transient compounds
are the phthalates and bisphenol A, which is used to make polycarbonate plastic.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>CURWOOD: Okay, so as a consumer where would I run into these
chemicals?</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>MYERS: You're going to run into them when you buy and use a
bottle made out of polycarbonate, for example, the rigid, really popular sports
bottles that virtually every college kid has. The way those are made guarantees
that this compound called bisphenol A will leach into the water. And there's a
whole new generation of science that's unfolded in the last ten years that has
transformed what scientists understand about the risk of that chemical.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>CURWOOD: Pete, could you tell us about the range of
sicknesses that have been linked to the endocrine disrupters?</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>MYERS: Well, that list is really quite large. It runs from
neurodevelopmental disorders, things like ADHD, attention hyperactivity
disorder syndrome. Autism. Obesity. And a variety of problems having to do with
weight regulation, what scientists call weight homeostasis. Diabetes. Problems
of aging, what happens to people as they're getting old. Definitely problems in
infertility. And malfunctions in the immune system so that people wind up
either with immune systems that are hyperactive and are involved in causing
auto-immune disorders, or the opposite, immune systems that aren't strong
enough to help us resist the diseases that we normally would be able to resist.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>CURWOOD: So, what's the link now between the hormone
disrupting chemicals that science is finding and this question of obesity? I
figure that, you know, I'm kind of big around the middle because I don't
exercise enough and I probably eat too much.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>MYERS: There's no doubt, Steve, that those are problems.
What our weight is clearly is affected by how much we eat and how much exercise
we get. But think about it: we all know people who are tall and thin and eat
like a horse and don't put weight on, period. Or we know other people who, no
matter how hard they try to limit their intake, they can't lose weight. It
turns out that in addition to the simple in and out, what you eat and how much
you exercise, there are feedback systems at work in the body that balance
weight. What this new science is telling us is there are things that can
happen, especially in development in the womb, that appear to be having an
effect on obesity.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>CURWOOD: How much research has been done on this link between
endocrine or hormone disrupters and obesity tendencies?</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>MYERS: Not a lot.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>CURWOOD: Not a lot.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>MYERS: Not nearly enough. We've got a small number of
studies that are raising big questions, and because obesity is such a huge
issue, this is a huge public health problem. And we're getting some signals
from the animal research that conditions in the womb can affect obesity.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Probably the most dramatic study of all of these has just
been published within the last two months by a laboratory in Spain, and they looked at the effect of bisphenol A, this compound that comes out of
polycarbonate plastic. They looked at it, and they created an experiment, they
ran an experiment where they exposed adult mice to bisphenol A at a level that
you can find in a lot of people, a lot of Americans. And what they found is
that within four days those adult mice developed insulin resistance. They were
no longer responding, their cells were no longer responding, properly to
insulin.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Well, when insulin resistance develops in people, 25 percent
of the people that get it go on to develop type 2 diabetes. It is the central
piece of metabolic syndrome. So here you've got this animal result saying a
contaminant that's present in 95 percent of Americans at levels at which the
experiments were run causes insulin resistance in mice. That's a big signal,
and the research community ought to be paying more attention to it.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>CURWOOD: So, Dr. Myers, can you tell us some good news?</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>MYERS: Well, yes, Steve, I'm glad you asked that. Because at
first encounter, this information is depressing, because it's telling us that
there are some contaminants in the environment that are interfering with gene
expression at low levels, and that the science is suggesting it's linked to a
number of human health problems, serious problems. But at the same time, think
of it this way: as these signals become sharper, clearer, we're going to be in
a position to reduce exposures. We're going to be in a position to prevent
diseases that until ten or 15 years ago many people wouldn't have imagined were
preventable. I think that's really good news.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>CURWOOD: John Peterson Myers is a biologist who's the head
of Environmental Health Sciences which publishes the Environmental Health News
Service. Thanks so much for taking this time.</span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>MYERS: Steve, it's been a pleasure.</span></font></p>
</div>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> <br>
Environmental Health News </span></font></p>
</div>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Insulin resistance and environmental contaminants </span></font></p>
</div>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> <br>
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