The uncomfortable, not even close to proven hypothesis, is that increased exposures to such hormone-disrupting chemicals are associated with an increased incidence of sex- and gender-diverse identities. That might be a good thing...I think sex- and gender-diverse people are wonderful and interesting...but the uncomfortable thought though is what that might imply in terms of the consequences of environmental policies. This topic is so fraught, I think there is a reluctance to engage except for those with an agenda, one side or another.
I don't really see the connection. The article is talking about the effects of these chemicals on infants breastfeeding and the effects on newborns.
While these are endocrine disrupting chemicals, people aren't transgender because their hormones are imbalanced. The reason transgender people do hormone replacement therapies is so that they can change their hormonal balance. If these chemicals were making people trans, baseline blood tests, which you need to take when you start HRT, would tell different stories than they tell. N1, mine were normal, and this aligns with what others I know have experienced.
My guess is that there is an appearance of a greater number of gender diverse people today because culturally we've reached a point where we don't feel like we need to die with the secret of being transgender, rather than because there were proportionally that many fewer transgender people before.
Honest question: wonder why this "gender diverse identities" thing is not as prevalent in low income countries, who may be as much impacted by same plastics and chemicals, or maybe more (because of widespread pollution and neglect).
1st, as I said, this is an unproven hypothesis. 2nd, the dominant impact on reported prevalence rates are 1) social acceptance of those identities, and 2) the relative risk in revealing those identities.
If being stoned to death is the risk faced for being gay, people won't tend to admit to being gay to a researcher.
Why would it not work the other way too? Maybe the Western society is hell bent on putting people into boxes, whereas people in third world countries are willing to look the other way for minor deviations [sic] as long as they're useful to their family / village / society?
If you didn't imbibe in your children that the only way to be a "man" is to be the jock on the football team, then maybe far less people would be suffering the dysphorias. Just like how exposure to Instagram causes body dysphoria in both young men and women.
Sexuality is so front-and-center in the Western society unlike many of the third world societies which are below in the 'hierarchy of needs'.
Did I miss the link to the study? I was wondering if storage contamination were a possibility? Breast milk storage bags are all plastic, and cheap brands abound.
I'm a bit confused by the article. It seems to be about this study[0]. Its the first item on Toxic Free Future's list of research. But the article states that Ryan Babadi is a lead author of the study, while there's no Babadi on the author list of the Nature
Has anyone seen evidence of lower levels in other countries? I searched for recent studies and it sounds like Canada and the EU have also reported similar findings but there isn't much widespread testing or totally comparable testing across locations.
These chemicals are so prevalent that there is no way to avoid them without legislature in a country that is destroying the ability to CHOOSE motherhood. So we’re setting ourselves up for forced births where the babies have no choice but to ingest these chemicals which negatively impact them. Hopefully this research leads to action to prevent this, but will likely get swept under a rug.
> The chemicals present a serious risk to infants because they likely interfere with hormones that are critical to newborns’ proper development, and have been found to be harmful at very low levels of exposure. About 92% of 50 samples were contaminated with at least one of the anti-microbials or plasticizers for which researchers checked.
If they were that significantly harmful it would be massively obvious at that level of prevalence.
I don't understand how The Guardian readers get through a normal day. Every headline on that page is doom-and-gloom news designed to get you to be fearful or panic about it.
While these are endocrine disrupting chemicals, people aren't transgender because their hormones are imbalanced. The reason transgender people do hormone replacement therapies is so that they can change their hormonal balance. If these chemicals were making people trans, baseline blood tests, which you need to take when you start HRT, would tell different stories than they tell. N1, mine were normal, and this aligns with what others I know have experienced.
My guess is that there is an appearance of a greater number of gender diverse people today because culturally we've reached a point where we don't feel like we need to die with the secret of being transgender, rather than because there were proportionally that many fewer transgender people before.
If being stoned to death is the risk faced for being gay, people won't tend to admit to being gay to a researcher.
Why would it not work the other way too? Maybe the Western society is hell bent on putting people into boxes, whereas people in third world countries are willing to look the other way for minor deviations [sic] as long as they're useful to their family / village / society?
If you didn't imbibe in your children that the only way to be a "man" is to be the jock on the football team, then maybe far less people would be suffering the dysphorias. Just like how exposure to Instagram causes body dysphoria in both young men and women.
Sexuality is so front-and-center in the Western society unlike many of the third world societies which are below in the 'hierarchy of needs'.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-026-00844-z
If they were that significantly harmful it would be massively obvious at that level of prevalence.
Very few places are doing any just-the-facts reporting.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6414251/
I don't think we are biologically far enough removed from "Oh my god, run, bear/snake/lion!"
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1376114/
And we may not be built (biologically) for the level of comfort that the majority of us (more so here on hacker news) live in.
I think the doom and gloom serves a purpose for a lot of people.