Man-Made Chemicals Cause 2:1 Ratio of Girls to Boys Born in Arctic
by Kenny Luna, North Babylon, NY on 09.12.07
According to a recent study done by scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (Amap), man-made chemicals found in high concentrations in the blood of pregnant women in some Arctic villages appear to be causing drastic changes in the traditional gender ratios of their offspring.
The scientists point out that the findings may also provide a reasonable explanation for the recent excess of girl babies across much of the northern hemisphere, and are now broadening their investigation across the most acutely affected communities in Russia, Greenland and Canada. The focus now will be to determine the size of the imbalance, which may prove to be significant considering that the inhabitants of one village in Greenland have given birth exclusively to females recently.
After measuring the levels of man-made chemicals in the women's blood that mimic human hormones, scientists concluded that they were capable of triggering changes in the sex of unborn children during the first three weeks of pregnancy. And as Lars-Otto Reierson, executive secretary for Amap, pointed out: "We knew that the levels of man-made chemicals were accumulating in the food chain, and that seals, whales and particularly polar bears were getting a dose a million times higher than that existing in plankton, and that this could be toxic to humans who ate these higher animals. What was shocking was that they were also able to change the sex of children before birth."
Recently, the historical sex balance of the human race has begun to change around the world as well. Throughout history there has usually been a slightly greater number of males than females born each year, but a paper published in the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences this year said that in Japan and the US there were 250,000 boys fewer than would have been expected had the sex ratio existing in 1970 remained as it was.
This is one of those seminal reports that could shake the chemical and beauty industries, reshape global markets, cause products in numerous categories to be redesigned, and get the regulatory pendulum swinging wide left again.
If this is true, it's revolutionary news... incredibly disturbing. But it ought to get more headlines than this!
Yes! I'm movin' north!
Okay... maybe I missed the memo, but I thought the presence (or absence) of y chromosomes determined gender. I'm not sure how chemicals can change the "sex" of a baby, unless they are referring to babies who are born as phenotypical females, but are essentially feminized males with actual y chromosomes. Or perhaps these are chromosomal aberrations such as Turner's Syndrome?
How is this even possible? Surely, no chemical or hormone could turn somebody from XY to XX? Are they saying that boys are being born with female genitalia? The writing in the Guardian story is very imprecise.
Is there a link to the original study somewhere?
Because the reporting is based on yet to be published findings, the mechanism is somewhat left open to speculation. Developmental changes can occur in several ways. It could even be that male children simply do not develop(they naturally abort at higher than normal rates). Time will tell.
"Sustainable Agriculture Network Discussion
The Independent
Geoffrey Lean
Something very strange is, according to this story, happening in a small but highly polluted Canadian community. And it may explain why every year thousands of British babies who should be boys are born as girls instead.
Young boys are becoming hard to find on the Chippewa Indian reservation in the gritty town of Sarnia, in Ontario's "Chemical Valley". It boasts four children's softball teams, but three of them are made up entirely of girls.
Research shows that the number of boys being born to the community has been dropping precipitously for the past 13 years, while the proportion of baby girls has risen. Now there are twice as many female births as male ones, though nature normally keeps the sexes in balance.
Scientists increasingly believe that pollution is to blame and that what has happened here - and among some other highly contaminated groups of people in other countries - may solve an enduring mystery of "missing boys" in maternity units throughout the industrialised world.
Normally, and with remarkable consistency around the globe, 106 boys are born for every 100 girls; the excess is thought to be nature's way of compensating for the fact that males were more likely to be killed through hunting and conflicts."
My understanding is that some of the problem lies in the sperm. The chemicals for some reason affect the sperm carrying Y chromosome more than those carrying a second X. The result: no boys, since all the fertilizing is done by X-carrying sperm.
Of course, I don't remember where I read that, but it was some time back...
I don't think it's that unusual for more females of a species to be born (or more males to be spontaneously aborted) in periods of stress - and our entire planet is under stress. It makes perfect sense to me in terms of survival of the species. Nature is incredible; whatever we throw at it, Nature tries to balance it out - sometimes harshly; bit like swatting the mosquito that continuously hovers around your head. I certainly see incidents like these (and they certainly aren't isolated) as canaries in the coal mine for the rest of humanity.
This is fishy - you guys are absolutely correct about XX vs XY. There's no way that chemicals in a woman could change the arrival of an X or Y chromosome coming from the father. So the Guardian article has some basic science catch-up to do.
However, it's very odd that the ratio is so skewed. It could be the father's propensity to donate the Y that's messed up. Or maybe, indeed, something is aborting the males early on in pregnancy.
The words "Rachel Carson" and "I told you so" come to mind.
My husband is concerned about this environmental problem but more urgent to me is the 200 billion the US plans to spend killing people in Iraq. This is an outrage. I have written all my congressmen, senators as a US citizen and the president (lacking foresight) who got us in there but they won't listen.
We need to stop spending my children's & grandchildren's money now in Iraq. We are borrowing &spending billions of dollars we don't have on a hopeless war that will only extend terrorism for many years. You don't stop terrorism by perpetuating it with war. Look at the terrorrists in Ireland which has had terrorism for centuries.