Some recent findings feed into the debate about whether endocrine disruption due to low-dose fetal exposure can have profound, permanent impacts on human health and well-being.

A report by an international team of scientists published in Human Reproduction (13 October 2005) suggests that endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) may be damaging human sperm. Blood and semen samples were taken from 707 men - 193 Inuit, 178 Swedish fishermen, 141 men from Warsaw, and 195 men from Kharkiv, Ukraine. The sperm was examined for signs of damage, looking for fragmentation of the DNA and comparing this will levels of PCBs in the bloodstream. There was a clear trend for the Swedes and Ukrainians, with the highest levels of PCBs being associated with 60% increase in DNA damage. But PCB levels in the men from Warsaw were very low, and no trend was found. In the Inuit, levels were high but damage was relatively low, perhaps due to genetic or lifestyle factors.

Information from this new international study is analysed in relation to the wider debate in an article entitled "Are EDCs blurring issues of gender?" published in Environmental Health Perspectives , October 2005 The EHP review provides a reminder that reproductive abnormalities linked to EDC exposures have been documented in animals, birds and other living organisms. For example, alligators in Lake Apopka, one of Florida’s most polluted lakes (including pesticide spill including DDT and DDE in 1980) have shortened penises and low levels of testosterone. It also restates the evidence that humans are susceptible to EDCs at high exposure levels. For example, the synthetic estrogen treatment DES, which was prescribed to pregnant women in the US and Europe from 1940s-1970s to prevent miscarriage, is known to have caused a rare form of vaginal cancer in thousands of daughters of women who took it.

If it is confirmed that low-level prenatal and childhood exposure to EDCs may contribute to a variety of abnormalities in human sexuality, gender development and behaviours, reproductive capabilities, and sex ratios, it would force changes in regulatory approaches and some common chemicals would likely disappear from the market, according to Environmental Health Perspective sources.