Seriously. This is scary. From William Saletan: Birth ratios have shifted so much since 1970 that the U.S. and Japan are “missing” about 260,000 men. Researchers say environmental toxins can prevent men from passing on the Y-chromosome. The full report here.
The scariest thing about “endocrine disrupters” are that they too tiny to research. Only in the past few years have we developed machines precise enough to test the presence of some of these chemicals in the body, in parts per million, billion, and even trillion. The machines cost a million dollars. So we can’t run test thousands of people and aggregate the statistics.
The most shocking evidence of the effect of pesticides came out of comparing drawings by Mexican children in an agricultural valley to those by children in foothills nearby. Here’s the story. And here are their drawings:
