**In 1978, when a small group of biologists studying the Elevenmile
Creek in Escandia County, Florida, were "startled" (their word) to find
a population of tiny mosquitofish that all appeared to be males, even
though some were pregnant and were bearing normal offspring. [1] Somehow
the female mosquitofish had been changed to look like males; they had
been "masculinized"...In 1981, a population of mosquitofish on the
Fenholloway River in Florida was discovered with the same odd sexual
characteristics.** http://www.envirolink.org/pubs/rachel/rehw475.htm
Activists from the Florida (USA) panhandle tell me that they wanted food
fish tested, but the government would not fund those studies. Many
scientists, who work independent of corporate America, are afraid these,
yet unidentified, chemicals are mobilizing through the food chain. The
last I heard on this topic was that Proctor & Gamble, the corporate
giant who releases the chemicals into the Fenholloway River, is
compromising to clean up the river by proposing to build a 15 mile
pipeline in order to directly send these chemicals into the Gulf of
Mexico, thereby bypassing the river and allowing it to be cleaned up.
Crabs and other seafood are caught in these waters and shipped
worldwide. Crabs are bottom feeders and are very likely to be
contaminated. They could change processes and bleach without chlorine
or use tree-free fibers that did not need as much bleaching, but that
would mean they would have to change their process ...heavens no (:-\ .
There are many battles to fight and hormone disrupting chemicals affect
many industries. It's not just plastics, or pesticides, or APEs, it's
also organochlorines and products of incomplete combustion released from
incinerators. To bring this around to plastics, pthalates and
organochlorines are also used to make the computer on which I'm typing
this email. How do we fight this societal problem? It will take more
than recycling. We must buy less and return to basic materials, such as
glass, recyclable steel nd natural fibers grown without manmade
chemicals --less we all become hermaphrodites.
Susan Snow