Contamination, endocrine disruptors

In recent years the interest of environmental analytical chemistry was turned to the so-called emerging contaminants or new unregulated contaminants including pharmaceuticals, endocrine disruptors, detergents, personal care products, plasticizers, flame retardants, gasoline additives, etc. These compounds are released continuously to the environment and can be found in water, sediments, soils, etc. In most of the cases they are found at trace level concentration (ng/L) therefore, powerful analytical capabilities are required for their determination. 

The Wall Street Journal article resulted in a less than complimentary letter from a member of the National Research Council (NRC) panel on endocrine disruptors to NRC staff indicating that Safe has undermined the work of the panel and has contaminated the pending report. Needless to say, there were demands for my removal from the panel, and the letter asserted that my 47... 

Deception Hormonal Chaos and The Feminization of Nature— Our Future at Risk chronicle the perceived, predicted, and observed problems associated with endocrine disruptors.50 Skepticism regarding the human impact of environmental contaminants has been discussed in several books including The Skeptical Environmentalist and Naturally Dangerous Surprising Facts About Food, Health and the Environment,51 and John Stossel (ABC television) remains a consistent skeptic with his features on junk science. 

In conclusion, there is no doubt that the effects of endocrine disruptors can be reproduced in experimental animals. However, the effects in animals after environmental exposure, and in which levels were measured, have been detected mostly when contamination was relatively high and in most other cases evidence for a causal Hnk is weak... 

Drinking water contamination with endocrine disruptors has become a serious concern. Arsenic, which is a worldwide drinking water contaminant, is a potent endocrine disruptor. 50,51 Organochlorine and other endocrine disrupting persistent organic polluting chemicals make their way into drinking water and raise questions about water potability in many areas. 28 ... 

Toft G, Edwards TM, Baatrup E, Guillette LJ Jr. Disturbed sexual characteristics in male mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) from a lake contaminated with endocrine disruptors. Environ Health Perspect 2003 111 695-701. 

Leatherland, J.F. Contaminant altered thyroid function in wildlife. In Environmental Endocrine Disruptors An Evolutionary Perspective, edited by L.J. Guillette and D.A. Crain, New York, Taylor Francis, pp. 155-181, 2000. 

According to Susan Brien et al. (2000, the single hit obtained by combining DDT and impotence), 33 million American men have erection problems, which may be caused by environmental contaminants. This problem inspired her and her co-workers to see if p,p-DDE disturbed erection in rats. They found that high doses (500 mg/kg) of DDE indeed had such an effect and concluded "The endocrine disruptor p,p-DDE can markedly interfere with erectile function and demonstrates persistence after a single dose. This supports our novel concept that environmental hormones may cause erectile dysfunction."... 

Endocrine disruptors are exogenous chemicals (for example, PCBs) that enter the body and act like hormones. They can dismpt physiology, sometimes with devastating consequences. Startling evidence from animal studies shows that male fish in detergent-contaminated water express female characteristics, turtles are sex-reversed by PCBs, male frogs exposed to a common herbicide form multiple ovaries, pseudohermaphroditic offspring are produced by polar bears found in contaminated waters, and seals in contaminated water have an excess of uterine fibroids.46... 

One of the major environmental problems with organotins is that they accumulate in sediments, which are the ultimate environmental sinks for contaminants such as this. Many aquatic organisms, such as oysters and mussels, suffer from buildup of toxic levels of these contaminants because they are filter feeders and thus bioaccumulate these contaminants as a result of this. Significant malformation and growth retardation has been observed in aquatic organisms following exposure to organotin species and compounds such as tributyltin are suspected endocrine disruptors. 

Table 2 summarizes some amperometric/voltammetric methods in which VACNT electrodes were used. As can be seen, the proposed electrochemical methods cover a number of different target analytes pharmaceutics, neurotransmitters, endocrine disruptors and water contaminants. Moreover, VACNT electrodes have been used together with nanomaterials, which mimic the active centre of en mes for fabrication of several biosensors. 

Contamination of the environment and agricultural products with endocrine disruptors(EDs) including dioxins, industrial chemicals and certain pesticide residues is a serious problem. These chemicals were found in the environment and agricultural products at nano-level concentrations, and are suspected of affecting ecosystems and human health. The Ministry of the Environment of Japan surveyed contamination of EDs in rivers, showing that bisphenol A, 176-estradiol and nonylphenol were detected in 50.3%, 40.4% and 31.0% of the water samples, respectively(Table 1). 

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