Silent Spring

What Dose of Toxic Chemicals Causes Harm?

Endocrine disruptors have turned classical toxicology on its head. For decades toxicologists have focused on acute toxicity; the more chemical added the more marked the effect. The thinking been that at low enough doses there is a point you reach where there is no observable adverse effect of the contaminant in question. It has always been a question of how do high levels of chemical pollutants affect health? What high dose causes cancer and what high dose causes death?

This way of thinking has been ingrained into the minds of generations of scientists, but slowly things are beginning to change. Evidence suggesting that another way is needed is growing fast.

‘The dose no longer makes the poison,’ in the case of endocrine disruptors. Endocrine disruptors are proving that extremely low doses are enough to cause serious physical damage to complex organism, if applied at crucial stages of their development. Endocrine disruptors can interfere with the role of hormones during foetal development resulting in physical changes that are sometimes not apparent till a child has reached puberty and beyond.

Old laws and regulations based on old paradigms cannot apply to endocrine disruptors. The methods used by industry for testing are simply out of date. Most testing methods do not encompass the subtle yet serious long term effects of chemicals that are potential endocrine disruptors.

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