From the Chickens to the Crabs - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 63

Endocrine disruptors are found in many everyday items, including cleaning
products, pesticides, flooring, air fresheners, and plastics (especially plastic containers
numbered 3, 6, and 7, which are associated with potentially harmful toxins).
Beyond early puberty, the incidence of intersex humans may, in fact, be on the rise.
In 2000, Anne Fausto-Sterling , a biology professor at Brown University, conducted the
leading study on the frequency of intersexuality and found that 1.7 percent of the pop-
ulation develops in a way that deviates from the standard definition of male or female.
Based on this figure, intersexuality is far more common than Down syndrome or albin-
ism. The issue was thrust into the spotlight in 2009, when an eighteen-year-old South
African track star named Caster Semenya won the women's world 800-meter title by a
wide margin—over two seconds—at the World Championships in Athletics in Berlin.
After her win, competitors questioned Semenya's gender: she has a husky voice and a
muscular body, and her rivals complained, “She's not a woman; she's a man.” After an
eleven-month absence and much debate, Semenya was allowed to race again in 2010.
At the same Berlin track she won the 800 meters again. Another outcry ensued, and
her competitors demanded that officials define what constitutes an acceptable biologic-
al baseline for female athletes.
Fish are most susceptible to endocrine disruption when they are still in their eggs in
river sediments or are very young and still undergoing sexual differentiation. If human
babies are exposed to endocrine disruptors when they are at a similar stage of develop-
ment—in utero, or when they are very young—then they, too, could theoretically suffer
immunosuppression or possibly intersex.
This is such new science that little hard evidence exists to link the incidence of inter-
sexuality in fish to that in humans. For now, it remains an intriguing question.
“For me that is the issue,” Vicki Blazer said. “Are we exposing our children to those
sorts of chemicals when they are most susceptible? And if we are, what are the effects?”
AQUATIC BOMB
A river is like a urinary tract. To Bob Hirsch , this is not a joke, it is a statement of fact.
As he explains it, doctors study a patient's urine to find out what is happening in a per-
son's body. Similarly, he said, “River water is the urine of the landscape. And we in the
hydrologic community look up and down our rivers to see what's in them in terms of
sediments, chemistry, pollution—in other words, to understand what's really happening
to the quality of our water.” With a grin he added, “I guess you could call people like me
'the nation's urologists.' “