Did
you know?
Reverse osmosis is the finest water filtration method known. This process will
allow the removal of particles as small as ions from a solution. It is used
to purify water and remove salts and other impurities in order to improve the
color, taste or properties of the fluid. R.O. uses a membrane that is semi-permeable,
allowing the fluid that is being purified to pass through it, while rejecting
other ions and contaminants from passing. This technology uses a process
known as crossflow to allow the r.o. membrane to continually clean itself. This
is the reason of why an r.o. element can last many years before clogging or
need replacement. This
water purification process requires a driving force to push the fluid through
the membrane, and the most common force is household water pressure or pressure
from a booster pump. The higher the pressure, the larger the driving force and
efficiency.
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A
Future without Males
A Growing Gender Imbalance in Babies Born around the Arctic Circle
Part
1.
Boys Becoming Rarer as PCBs and Toxic Chemicals Build Up in Mothers'
Body
In several
villages in Greenland, baby boys have disappeared because only girls are
being borne. The reports of villages without baby boys come from those
located near the U.S. Air Force base in Thule, Greenland. But this trend
is not only limited to Greenland; in remote northern Russia and remote
Canada in the Arctic region, there are also reports that many more girls
than boys are being borne. In normal populations historically, more boys
than girls are born—specifically, the normal average is 1.05 or 1.1
boy per 1.0 girl, meaning that if there are approximately 1,050 to 1,100
boys per 1,000 girls in normal healthy populations. However, in
these Arctic regions the average was two girls per boy, or all girls and
no boys at all. When boys are borne, they tend to be underweight and sickly.
The same imbalance in sex ratios was observed in Italy after a chemical
accident in the northern Italian town of Seveso in 1976 exposed the local
people to high levels of dioxins.
This gender
shift is now being observed in the general population of the United States
and Japan: According to a paper published in 2007 by the U.S. National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, there are now 250,000 fewer
boys than expected in Japan and the United States according to historical
norms and according to the sex ratio existing in 1970, and that there
is an excess of girls over boys being borne (The Guardian, September 12,
2007). However, the scientists were unable to pin down exact causes for
this new surplus of girls over boys. Common sense would dictate that it
is because of the gradual poisoning of PCBs and other toxic chemicals
of the general population over the past few decades, which caused this
shift in sex ratios in new births.
Scientists
are now trying to understand why this dramatic shift in sex ratios is
taking place.
Studies conducted
a few years ago are now being publicized, and they show that in other
Arctic regions, the sex ratios of babies are shockingly out of balance.
In 2004, the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program found a correlation
between exposure to PCBs and shifts in the sex ratios of babies born to
indigenous mothers living in the remote northern Russia. PCBs and other
persistent organic chemicals (such as pesticides and flame retardants)
travel from industrial countries up the food chain into the blubber of
marine mammals (e.g., seals and whales), a major part of the traditional
Inuit and indigenous people's diet.
The scientists
examined mothers and children on Russia's Kola, Taimyr and Chukotka peninsulas,
in the Pe-chora river basin and on the Commodore Islands (The Times, September
12, 2007). According to scientists, PCB levels are 10 times higher in
parts of Greenland than in Russia. These chemical pollutants are carried
north by winds and ocean currents, and they accumulate as they pass up
the food chain. Some are endocrine disrupters—chemicals that mimic
sex hormones of estrogen and testosterone.
Lars Otto
Reiersen is the executive secretary for the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment
Program, which conducted the study as part of ongoing research on pollution,
diet, and health in the Arctic region. Dr. Reirersen was interviewed on
radio by Living On Earth, a weekly show broadcasted on public radio in
September 2007. He said the following:
REIERSEN:
The most interesting and surprising result was that we saw a change
in the sex ratio that we could correlate to the levels of PCB in the
mother's blood. And we saw that if the mother had more than four micrograms
per liter [of PCB] in her blood the average was to change two girls
per boy in the population that we studied. And that's a quite dramatic
change from a normal situation where there are more boys than girls
born.
Photographs:
Map and photo of Greenland. Baby boys are gradually disappeared in Greenland
and eastern Russia due to contamination of PCBs. (Photos courtesy of Wikipedia)
What
are PCBs? Chemical Structure
Evidence of Toxicity in Science and Medical Literature.
A schematic
of the structure of PCB is shown above. In a study of the impact of PCB
and p,p'-DDE (flame retardant) on human sperm Y:X chromosome ratio among
three European populations (in Sweden, Poland, and Ukraine) and the Inuit
population in Greenland, European
scientists have found the following (Tiido et al., 2006):
Recent
studies indicate that persistent organohalogen pollutants (POPs) may
contribute to sex ratio changes in offspring of exposed populations.
Our aim in the present study was to investigate whether exposure to
2,2',4,4',5,5'-hexachlorobiphenyl (PCB-153) and dichlorodiphenyldichloroethene
(p,p'-DDE) affects sperm Y:X chromosome distribution. Swedish and Greenlandic
men had on average significantly higher proportions of Y sperm (in both
cohorts, 51.2%) and correspondingly higher lipid-adjusted concentrations
of PCB-153 (260 ng/g and 350 ng/g, respectively) compared with men from
Warsaw (50.3% and 22 ng/g) and Kharkiv (50.7% and 54 ng/g). In the Swedish
cohort, log-transformed PCB-153 and log-transformed p,p'-DDE variables
were significantly positively associated with Y-chromosome fractions
(-values 0.04 and < 0.001, respectively). On the contrary, in the Polish
cohort PCB-153 correlated negatively with the proportion of Y-bearing
fraction of spermatozoa (p = 0.008).
These scientists
concluded that "The present study indicates that POP exposure might
be involved in changing the proportion of ejaculated Y-bearing spermatozoa
in human populations. Intercountry differences, with different exposure
situations and doses, may contribute to varying Y:X chromosome ratios"
(Tiido et al., 2006). In other words, PCBs, flame retardants, and other
POP chemicals contribute to a shift in sex ratio observed in Greenland
and elsewhere by changing the Y-bearing sperm in men.
PCBs
and Persistent Chemicals in Our Food and Drinking Water:
How to Avoid Toxic Chemicals
Both public
and private water supplies—wells or groundwater, rivers, streams,
and lakes—can be sources of toxic exposure, especially for pesticides,
herbicides, PCBs, flame retardants, industrial solvents, heavy metals,
and fertilizers.
The best
way to avoid drinking chemical contamination of our drinking water is
to use filters (such as filters used in reverse-osmosis, or R.O., systems)
to purify our drinking water. PCBs and other persistent chemicals can
be filtered out using common household R.O. systems.
The best
way to avoid PCBs and other persistent chemicals in our food is by eating
less meat. Inuit and other indigenous peoples of the Arctic—whether
they reside in Greenland, northern Russia, or remote Canada—have
a heavily meat-based traditional diet. Because of the extremely cold climate
where they reside, they generally eat primarily blubber and flesh of seals,
whales, a wide variety of fish (e.g., salmon), and other land mammals
(e.g., moose). PCBs and other persistent toxic chemicals tend to build
up in the blubber and flesh of these animals which make up the bulk of
the Inuit and other indigenous peoples' diet. Scientists have found that
the toxic chemicals in mothers' blood are directly related to the gender
of their babies. These chemicals also trigger a variety of cancers in
people, and they have been established by hundreds of scientists publishing
thousands of peer-reviewed research papers in scientific and academic
journals in past decades.
Many agricultural
chemicals (such as DDT pesticide, other organochlorine pesticides, herbicides,
nematicides, rodenticides) are also toxic to humans in that they are considered
"endocrine disrupters" in that they mimic the natural sex hormones
of estrogen and testosterone in humans. If we want to reduce our body's
toxic burden, then we must avoid these toxic chemicals in our food and
water. We know that we can filter out the chemicals in water using home
R.O. systems. As for food, we can also reduce these chemicals by eating
organic foods whenever possible and by consuming less meat whenever possible.
What happens
if we do not reduce our own toxic burden in our environment and in our
body? For people of reproductive age who would like to have biological
children of their own, it means that they are more likely to have girls
than boys. Over many generations, the human population would see excess
of girls—perhaps at 2:1 girls-to-boys ratio—and a gradual decline
in males. The boys borne would be underweight, sickly, and probably not
able to live to reproductive age. Even if these sickly boys do grow up
to be men, they will probably be infertile or not able to procreate healthy
babies due to their poor-quality sperm (i.e., low-motile sperm) and low
sperm count. Over
time, it is conceivable that we humans
will one day become extinct.
Photos: Baby
boys will become more rare in future generations if we as a society do
not reduce our production and use of PCBs, DDT, flame retardants, agricultural
pesticides, and other persistent toxic chemicals. We must dramatically
reduce pollution if we care about human survival in the next century.
References
Tarmo Tiido,
Anna Rignell-Hydbom, Bo A.G. Jönsson, Yvonne Lundberg Giwercman, Henning
S. Pedersen, Bogdan Wojtyniak, Jan K. Ludwicki, Vladimir Lesovoy, Valentyna
Zvyezday, Marcello Spano, Gian-Carlo Manicardi, Davide Bizzaro, Eva C.
Bonefeld-Jørgensen, Gunnar Toft, Jens Peter Bonde, Lars Rylander, Lars
Hagmar, and Alexander Giwercman. "Impact of PCB and p,p'-DDE Contaminants
on Human Sperm Y:X Chromosome Ratio: Studies in Three European Populations
and the Inuit Population in Greenland," in Environmental Health
Perspectives, Volume 114, Number 5, May 2006, pages 718-724.
The Guardian
(U. K.). September 12, 2007. "Man-made chemicals blamed as many more
girls than boys are born in Arctic. High levels can change sex of child
during pregnancy. Survey of Greenland and east Russia puts ratio at 2:1,"
by Paul Brown in Nuuk, Greenland.
The Times.
September 12, 2007. "Pollution blamed for fall in Arctic baby boys,"
by Alex Kirby.
"Living
on Earth" radio show. September 21, 2007.
 
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