Word: colborne
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Suspicions about hormone disrupters were raised a few years ago by Theodora Colborn, a zoologist with the World Wildlife Fund who did a study on the reproductive health of Great Lakes wildlife in the late 1980s. Colborn discovered that the young of 16 predator species, including fish, birds, reptiles and mammals, were failing to survive to adulthood or could not reproduce if they did. All the animals ate fish from the Great Lakes, which were contaminated with a variety of hormone-like chemicals...
...Colborn suspected a cause-and-effect relationship between pollution and fertility problems -- and by extension a possible danger to humans. She began collecting human epidemiological studies, which suggested to her that human fetal exposure to such chemicals as PCBs could produce disorders affecting behavior, immune-system functioning, memory and learning. She also surveyed the literature on humans exposed to diethylstilbestrol, or DES, a synthetic drug that is related to estrogen. DES can be used to prevent miscarriage, treat prostate and breast cancer or reduce the symptoms of menopause; it can even promote growth in sheep and cows...