Our Stolen Future

T. Colborn, D. Dumanoski and J. P. Myers, Our Stolen Future, Little Brown, London, 1996. 

T. Colborn, J. Peterson Myers and D. Dumanoski, Our Stolen Future, Little, Brown, Boston, 1996. P. Grandjean et al., presented at the European Workshop on the Impaet of Endoerine Disruptors on Human Health and Wildlife, Weybridge, UK, 1996, Environment and Climate Researeh Programme, DGXII, European Commission Publieation EUR 17549, p. 5. 

Colbom T., Dumanoski D., Myers J.P. Our Stolen Future Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival A Scientific Detective Story. N.Y. Dutton, 1996. 306 pp. 

Colbom T, Dumanowski D, Myers JP (1996) Our stolen future. New York, Penguin Books Ltd. 

Colborn, T, Dumanoski, D. and Myers, J. P. (1996) Our Stolen Future, Litde Brown and Company, London... 

Our Stolen Future convinced me that we should be much more worried about synthetic chemicals than we generally are. So when I decided to do a PhD in philosophy in 2000, I chose to look at the regulation of chemicals, to see why the regulatory system was so ill equipped to deal with the issues raised by endocrine disruption. I felt that treating chemicals as isolated entities was part of the problem, so my research became an investigation into how we think about and publicly assess technologies, taking synthetic chemicals as an example. This book is the result of that research. 

Some media outlets trumpeted the 1996 book Our Stolen Future,5 a compilation of mostly unverified observations and speculations, and a paper published in Science that presented startling results purportedly showing that tiny concentrations of some chemicals behaved as endocrine disruptors. Congress rushed legislation that requires billions of dollars to be spent to test chemicals that were regarded as safe except for the alleged estrogenic effects.5... 

Assertions of risk, which in risk assessment are analogous to a hypothesis in science, do not have to withstand tests. Theo Col-born, an author of Our Stolen Future, stated, Just because we don t have the evidence doesn t mean there are no effects. 10 Exactly we may have overlooked something in our search for evidence. But, in context, Colborn s statement went much further. It was made after several years of scientific research had failed to support her assertions about endocrine disruptors. Her statement brushed the evidence aside. No matter how much information is... 

The subject of endocrine disruptors and fear of chemicals (chemophobia) has been addressed in several recent books on both sides of this contentious issue. Our Stolen Future Hormone... 

There is a tendency to think that the issue of Pharmaceuticals in the Environment (PIE) is a relatively recent one brought to prominence over the past decade by high profile works such as the treatise Our Stolen Future [1] and ever more lurid newspaper headlines. However, reviews of the issue were appearing at least a decade earlier including some remarkably prescient content. The publication in 1985 of a review of the fate of pharmaceutical chemicals in the environment [2] raised many of the issues that are still of concern today. 

Much of the concern focuses on man-made - and mainly organic - chemicals, as highlighted in the book Our Stolen Future 4 Possible adverse effects of endocrine disrupters include cancers, behavioural changes and reproductive abnormalities. There is conclusive evidence for effects on wildlife, but the evidence for effects on humans is still not conclusive. It is still unclear whether the presence of environmental chemicals could lead to actual exposure. 

Dr. Theo Colborn is a scientist and one of the world s leading experts on endocrine disrupters. Her work has prompted the enactment of new laws around the world (including Senate Bill 5 1391.-"Child, Worker, and Consumer-Safe Chemicals Act of 2005") and redirected the research of government and academia. She s a professor of zoology at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and the coauthor of Our Stolen Future. 

Colborn, T., Dumanoski, D., Myers, J.P., 1996. Our Stolen Future. Dutton, New York. Dahl, P., Lindstrom, G., Wiberg, K., Rappe, C., 1995. Absorption of polychlorinated biphenyls, dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans by breast-fed infants. Chemosphere 30, 2297-2306. 

Effects have also been observed on the environment. Rachel Carson s Silent Spring in the 1960s drew attention to effects on wildlife. Our Stolen Future (Colbom et al. 1996) created an interest in disruption of the endocrine system by chemicals, even in animals. Many cases of effects on natural animal populations can now be inferred from laboratory experiments, although confirmation in the environment is extremely difficult. For instance, organochlorinc concentrations in adult male bottlenose dolphins are approaching the levels associated with adverse effects found in marine mammals (Carballo et al. 2008), and exposures of tadpoles to a mixture of nine pesticides at environmentally occurring levels lead to developmental effects in most frogs, while none were observed when the pesticides were applied one at a time (Hayes et al. 2006). 

T. Colborn, J.P. Meyers and D. Dumanoski, Our Stolen Future, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1996. 

Colburn T, Dumanoski D, and Meyers JP (1992) Our Stolen Future. New York Dutton Books. 

Since the publication of the book Our Stolen Future by Theo Colborn and co-authors in 1996 and the... 

In 1996, the book Our Stolen Future, by Colborn, Myers, and Dianne Dumanoski, popularized the endocrine disrupter hypothesis by framing it as a kind of scientific detective story. Critics of the book argued that it distorted the underlying science, but like Silent Spring before it, subsequent research has shown it to be correct on all essentials and to have underestimated the severity and magnitude of the problem. 

Colborn T, Peterson-Myers J, and Dumanoski D (1996) Our Stolen Future How We Are Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival - A Scientific Detective Story. New York Dutton/Signet. 

Toxic chemicals are now found in virtually every corner of the globe. The highest mountains, the depths of the ocean, and far reaches of the polar regions are contaminated with toxic chemicals. This subject has been well explored and well written about by numerous researchers and writers. Rachel Carson s Silent spring11] and Theo Colborn and coauthors Our stolen future are two well-known sources. Toxicants are spread by wind, carried by water, and bioaccumulated by the various food chains to ultimately reach humans. It is beyond the scope of this book to examine the spread of toxic chemicals in the environment. One example, however, is illustrative of the extent of this phenomenon. 

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