Scientists expose body toxin risks - will affect 2 generations' fertility [View All]

[Holly_Hobby]

SAN FRANCISCO — Your ability to reproduce — and the health of your child and even your child's children — hinges on an exquisitely timed series of chemical reactions controlled by infinitesimally tiny amounts of hormones.

You scramble those reactions at your peril, in other words, and last week hundreds of researchers gathered at the University of California, San Francisco, warned society may be doing exactly that with synthetic chemicals.

The chemicals, known as endocrine disruptors, are found everywhere in our environment: food, lotions, shampoos, baby bottles, toys, appliances, even casings for medicines. They mimic hormones at levels scientists only recently have been able to measure, and some are active at concentrations of a part-per-trillion or less — a speck of dirt sullying 55 tons of clean laundry.

Most worrisome to scientists: In many cases, the effect of such pollution on our bodies remains as unknown and mysterious as the processes they potentially disrupt.

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