Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story. - Hardcover

Colborn, Theo; Dumanoski, Dianne; Meyers, John Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525939822 ISBN 13: 9780525939825

Publisher: Dutton Adult, 1996

Synopsis

An investigative account identifies the ways that pollutants are disrupting human reproductive patterns and directly causing such problems as birth defects, sexual abnormalities, and reproductive failures. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour.

About this title

Review:

Is there really a population crisis looming due to reduced human sperm counts? Is there anything we can do about it? This work by two leading environmental scientists and an award-winning journalist picks up where Rachel Carson's Silent Spring left off, offering evidence that synthetic chemicals may have upset our normal reproductive and developmental processes. By threatening the fundamental process that perpetuates survival, these chemicals may be invisibly undermining the human race.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A new expos‚ points out the threat of chemical pollutants that mimic the hormones in our bodies, undercutting the natural cycles of growing organisms. Dumanoski is a science reporter for the Boston Globe; Colborn and Myers are two of the environmental scientists who have pioneered the study of the biological effects of pollution. In the late 1980s, while studying the effects of pollution on the Great Lakes, Colborn began to recognize a pattern: the impairment of reproductive or growth cycles in various organisms. The evidence includes gull populations in which males are so scarce that females have taken to nesting together, eagles that have lost interest in mating, and alligators with deformed sexual organs. The culprits were PCBs, dioxin, DDE (a DDT breakdown product)--persistent chemicals that concentrate in the body fat of animals toward the top of the food chain and, ultimately, in human beings. Despite efforts to ban use of the chemicals, they are already ubiquitous in the environment--in everything from arctic ice to mother's milk--and some of them will not break down for centuries. Several studies indicate lowered sperm counts in human males over the last 50 years, quite possibly an effect of the increased use of the suspected chemicals. Dumanoski effectively dramatizes the story of Colborn's findings, explaining both the biochemical reactions and their environmental importance. On the difficult question of how to combat the pervasive threat, the authors have several suggestions: monitoring the quality of drinking water, not eating fish from waters known to be contaminated, avoiding animal fat in the diet, eating organic produce, avoiding contact between food and plastics. On a governmental level, increasing vigilance and regulation is a step in the right direction. The authors' warning may seem alarmist to many, but in view of the potential threat to humanity as a whole, it would be folly to ignore it. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dutton Adult
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0525939822
• ISBN 13: 9780525939825
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 306