Dangerous hormone-disrupting chemicals found in US breast milk samples (theguardian.com)
52 points by andsoitis 3 hours ago
SubiculumCode an hour ago
The uncomfortable, not even close to proven hypothesis, is that increased exposures to such hormone-disrupting chemicals are associated with an increased incidence of sex- and gender-diverse identities. That might be a good thing...I think sex- and gender-diverse people are wonderful and interesting...but the uncomfortable thought though is what that might imply in terms of the consequences of environmental policies. This topic is so fraught, I think there is a reluctance to engage except for those with an agenda, one side or another.
spcebar 41 minutes ago
I don't really see the connection. The article is talking about the effects of these chemicals on infants breastfeeding and the effects on newborns.
While these are endocrine disrupting chemicals, people aren't transgender because their hormones are imbalanced. The reason transgender people do hormone replacement therapies is so that they can change their hormonal balance. If these chemicals were making people trans, baseline blood tests, which you need to take when you start HRT, would tell different stories than they tell. N1, mine were normal, and this aligns with what others I know have experienced.
My guess is that there is an appearance of a greater number of gender diverse people today because culturally we've reached a point where we don't feel like we need to die with the secret of being transgender, rather than because there were proportionally that many fewer transgender people before.
gslepak 36 minutes ago
> people aren't transgender because their hormones are imbalanced. The reason transgender people do hormone replacement therapies is so that they can change their hormonal balance.
Not so sure, it could have to do with their hormones. I recall experiencing mild gender dysphoria during a period when my testosterone was recorded as below normal. When it returned to normal the dysphoria went away. It could be that some choose to say, "Since I think I'm a girl, perhaps I should swing the hormones even further in that direction."
I'm just one data point though, would be curious to hear other's experiences with dysphoria and what their blood work shows.
EDIT: And think about it, it's a logical contradiction to say that "hormones have nothing to do with it but write me an Rx to mess with my hormones so that I'm more of a girl."
spcebar 4 minutes ago
piperswe 32 minutes ago
junior44660 an hour ago
Honest question: wonder why this "gender diverse identities" thing is not as prevalent in low income countries, who may be as much impacted by same plastics and chemicals, or maybe more (because of widespread pollution and neglect).
SubiculumCode an hour ago
1st, as I said, this is an unproven hypothesis. 2nd, the dominant impact on reported prevalence rates are 1) social acceptance of those identities, and 2) the relative risk in revealing those identities.
If being stoned to death is the risk faced for being gay, people won't tend to admit to being gay to a researcher.
junior44660 an hour ago
add-sub-mul-div 34 minutes ago
The "increase" could just be that (1) we've evolved enough acceptance for people to come out of the closet and (2) lots of people have adopted neutral pronouns on social media as a way of showing support for the issue, not due to actual gender dysphoria. If you're trying to scare people, all of these people are now "trans".
Just like people are easy to scare about autism being some kind of epidemic when many people (like me) have a diagnosis of only a mild, borderline, or provisional form of it. That never would have been diagnosed until recently or would have been diagnosed as something else.
childofhedgehog 2 hours ago
These chemicals are so prevalent that there is no way to avoid them without legislature in a country that is destroying the ability to CHOOSE motherhood. So we’re setting ourselves up for forced births where the babies have no choice but to ingest these chemicals which negatively impact them. Hopefully this research leads to action to prevent this, but will likely get swept under a rug.
molsongolden 2 hours ago
Has anyone seen evidence of lower levels in other countries? I searched for recent studies and it sounds like Canada and the EU have also reported similar findings but there isn't much widespread testing or totally comparable testing across locations.
ComputerGuru an hour ago
Did I miss the link to the study? I was wondering if storage contamination were a possibility? Breast milk storage bags are all plastic, and cheap brands abound.
tokai 38 minutes ago
I'm a bit confused by the article. It seems to be about this study[0]. Its the first item on Toxic Free Future's list of research. But the article states that Ryan Babadi is a lead author of the study, while there's no Babadi on the author list of the Nature publication.
Metacelsus an hour ago
Sure, but at what levels? The dose makes the poison, and the article doesn't say
SoftTalker an hour ago
I don't understand how The Guardian readers get through a normal day. Every headline on that page is doom-and-gloom news designed to get you to be fearful or panic about it.
bitmasher9 44 minutes ago
Doom-and-gloom, fear and anger are the predominant emotions in the entire journalism industry.
Very few places are doing any just-the-facts reporting.
tokai 20 minutes ago
The articles cover an actual study, that wasn't theoretical but based on data of sampling. What kind of just-the-facts reporting do you actually want?
zer00eyz an hour ago
https://www.whatisepigenetics.com/scarred-for-life-the-epige...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6414251/
I don't think we are biologically far enough removed from "Oh my god, run, bear/snake/lion!"
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1376114/
And we may not be built (biologically) for the level of comfort that the majority of us (more so here on hacker news) live in.
I think the doom and gloom serves a purpose for a lot of people.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 2 hours ago
> The chemicals present a serious risk to infants because they likely interfere with hormones that are critical to newborns’ proper development, and have been found to be harmful at very low levels of exposure. About 92% of 50 samples were contaminated with at least one of the anti-microbials or plasticizers for which researchers checked.
If they were that significantly harmful it would be massively obvious at that level of prevalence.