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Nie ma problemu środowiskowych estrogenów

Mastalerz P.

Wiadomości Chemiczne

2002

[Z] 56, 5-6

483-494

In ecological literature the term "environmental estrogens" refers to industrial compounds which contaminate the environment and have estrogen-like biological activity. In a strict sense the term should include also estrogens produced by plants (phytoestrogens) but these are scarcely mentioned by environmentalists who all their attention concentrate on man-made chemicals. The first observation of hormonal activity of an industrial chemical dates back to 1950 when Burlingtion et al. reported that DDT affects the secondary sex characteristics of male birds. Similar observations multiplied in later years but the observed effects were always weak or very weak and did not attract much interest. The situation changed when environmentalists became aware of the huge propaganda potential of estrogenic activity of pesticides such as DDT and begun using that activity as one of the tools helping their efforts to bring about a ban of man-made pesticidal compounds. In many ecological publications the hormonal activity of industrial compounds was suitably enlarged and horrifying scenarios were developed, some of them predicting even the end of mankind due to cancer and catastrophic reduction of fertility. As usual, the mass media are happily helping to ring the alarm bells. Fortunately there are several reasons to dismiss the environmental estrogens scare. First of all, plants such as rice, wheat, cabbage, potatoes and many other contain substantial amounts of compounds with estrogenic activity but are eaten daily without harm. And there are no scientific grounds to believe that industrial estrogens are more harmful than phytohormones. Some specific and very recent developments in the field of environmental estrogens include the fertility of males, the alleged synergistic potentiation of weak estrogens and the problem of their cancerogenic activity. The problem of fertility emerged with a publication by Danish scientists who claimed that the sperm counts in otherwise healthy men are very rapidly decreasing. For obvious reasons the problem received much attention and the Danish publication was followed by several papers on sperm counts, e. g. However, no one was able to confirm the claims of Danish scientists. The problem of synergism ended with a scandal. The paper claiming a thousandfold increase of estrogenic activity when mixtures are applied instead of single compounds was retracted and one of the authors admitted cheating (Science, 294, 763 (2001)) Finally, the accusation that DDE (one of the metabolites of DDT) is responsible for breast cancer in women was convincingly disproved. And so ended the environmental estrogens scare.