Endocrine Disruptors, Hormonal Havoc and Gender Bending

In the fall of 2000 there appeared a remarkable story on the front page of The Washington Post. It was about a very odd and unsettling discovery made at the Potomac River, from which most Washingtonians derived their drinking water. Scientists had been collecting smallmouth bass from the river and its several tributaries. When they examined the fish closely they were startled to find that the male fish looked suspiciously like females. Their sex organs were not producing sperm, they were producing eggs! As many as 80 percent of the male fish collected displayed this abnormality - they had become feminized. Scientists looking for answers suspected that pollution in the river must have had something to do with it, but exactly what or how they could not say.

As it turned out, this was not the only report of gender-confused wildlife. Researchers had noted instances of emasculated males amongst several kinds of mammals as well as fish in Idaho, Florida, the Great Lakes region, Alaska, England, and as far away as Greenland. What on earth was going on? And could it possibly be related to an earlier story reported in the Post - about human males? A study of young men attending colleges and universities in the Washington area revealed a disturbing rise in the incidence of impotence and loss of libido. Elsewhere throughout the nation, pediatricians were reporting an unusually high number of boys with genital abnormalities such as undescended testicles. For the past several years male infertility has been on the rise, and a number of clinical studies indicate that today's young men have, on average, lower testosterone levels than the men of their grandfather's generation. Could there be something in the environment that was contributing to all this?