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TODAY Wednesday 8 October 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Girls and Puberty

An indispensable publication is Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly. Rachel's slogan -- "Providing news and resources for environmental justice" -- tells you something of the advocacy mission of editor Peter Montague and his staff. They're skeptical of corporations, romantic about the grassroots, and generally of the opinion that the burden of proof on the safety of synthetic chemicals should be borne by those who seek to introduce them into the environment. Frequently difficult, always informative.

This week's edition (#566) synopsizes an article in the journal Pediatrics (Marcia E. Herman-Giddens et. al., "Secondary Sexual Characteristics and Menses in Young Girls Seen in Office Practice," Vol. 99, No. 4, April 1997). According to Rachel's, the article reports on a national study of pediatricians who found that girls are showing signs of puberty -- pubic hair and breast enlargement -- at ever-earlier ages.

225 clinicians in suburban practices kept records on more than 17,000 girls, 90% white and 10% black (not a random sample, but a wide one). They observed an average age for the onset of puberty at just under nine years old for the black girls and just over ten for the whites. This is considerably earlier than indicated by data presented in standard medical texts, which describe an average onset of puberty between the ages of 11 and 12.

According to the pediatricians, puberty occurs earlier but menstruation does not. The average first menstruation for the white girls in the study was 12.8 years, and for the black girls 12.0 years. This pattern has apparently held steady since the late 1950s.

So why the early puberty? The authors of the study suggest that one possible factor could be increased exposure (of both mothers and offspring) to synthetic chemicals that affect the hormone system, AKA "endocrine disrupters." Since endocrine disrupters are suspected actors in a number of maladies, both animal and human, they've attracted lots of attention in recent years. The book "Our Stolen Future" introduced endocrine disruption to a wide audience in 1996, and we're doing our bit here by dedicating one of the four portions of our In The Trenches section to the issue.

Given the near-ubiquity of the suspect chemicals and the difficulty of sorting out what causes what in a world where everyone carries a few dozen long-lived toxins in their fat tissues, it will take a stretch of time before researchers are able to supply definitive answers about endocrine disrupters and their consequences. In the meantime, though, it was interesting to receive in the mail last week a letter from EPA Assistant Administrator Lynn Goldman announcing the formation of a congressionally-mandated body called the Endocrine Disruptor Screening and Testing Advisory Committee (EDSTAC). EDSTAC, "consisting of representatives from industry, the federal government, university research scientists, and various environmental and citizen groups," is charged to "develop a screening and testing program for certain chemicals to determine if they have endocrine disrupting properties."

The 1996 law that birthed EDSTAC said that EPA had to present a screening program to Congress by August 1998 and implement the program not more than a year later. Not nearly enough time (and not nearly enough money) to consider testing protocols for all of the possible disrupters and their tendencies to mimic, suppress, or impel the production of human hormones, so EDSTAC is already talking about "prioritization." Experts in the field are disappointed in the limited scope.

Still and all, an important step, perhaps momentous: the slow-moving giant of federal research is finally turning its attention to an issue crying to be studied ever since Rachel Carson and "Silent Spring." Perhaps we'll have some answers after all to the mystery of the premature ten year old girls.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE:

Getcha free paper! Liberty Tree's newsletter, The Grove, is on the cyber-stands with a new issue. Exclusive corespondent (and Dartmouth professor and distinguished author) Donella Meadows takes you on a tour of some hopeful examples of unconventional agriculture in Europe. Subscribe now: painless and costless.

 

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