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Is Environmental Injustice Morphing Little Girls’ Bodies?
The beginning of adolescence is a tough time for any girl. It's harder when you're growing up in a tough neighborhood and go to a rough school. And it's really hard when you face all the surging hormones and other tribulations of puberty before you even reach your eighth birthday.
If this sounds unnatural, it's the reality for many young girls of color who experience early signs of puberty at alarming rates. The latest research adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that an array of social and environmental factors may be causing girls' bodies to develop prematurely. The New York Times reports that the potential causes flagged by researchers include exposures to chemical contaminants and obesity. The study-supported by the Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Centers-looked at 1,239 girls screened in Manhattan, Cincinnati and San Francisco. It reveals stark racial disparities.
The girls who developed breasts early, as young as age seven, were disproportionately Black and Latina. Black 8-year-olds were more than twice as likely as white girls to develop breasts. As the NYT reports:
At 7 years, 10.4 percent of white, 23.4 percent of black and 14.9 percent of Hispanic girls had enough breast development to be considered at the onset of puberty.
At age 8, the figures were 18.3 percent in whites, 42.9 percent in blacks and 30.9 percent in Hispanics. The percentages for blacks and whites were even higher than those found by a 1997 study that was one of the first to suggest that puberty was occurring earlier in girls.
As Susan Shane explained in a 2008 Colorlines essay, early puberty tends to produce complicated dilemmas. Girls often find themselves physically maturing at a faster pace than they learn how to deal with sexual contact, and may face certain cancer risks later in life.
The findings dovetail with earlier research by the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, which has tracked elevated exposures to environmental toxins in mothers in low-income New York neighborhoods. The data reflect a disturbing prevalence of chemicals known to be endocrine disruptors, including common plastic ingredients known as pthalates.
The Obama administration has begun taking environmental health risks more seriously, beginning with a groundbreaking report from the Presidential Cancer Panel which highlighted the threats of environmental carcinogens.
Meanwhile, the White House is campaigning to reduce childhood obesity, another health problem tied to early-onset puberty, which may expand poor kids' access to healthy foods and recreation.
As the budget battle shakes out, it's too early to tell how comprehensively the administration will address the link between health and environment. The research is clear, however: the risk to youth isn't just about "lifestyle," but justice, especially for the young girls of color who carry an unequal burden as they step suddenly into adulthood.
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49 Comments so far
Show AllThis is about the scariest thing I think I have ever read on CommonDreams. I wonder if there are any stats for boys too - are they experiencing the same morphing?
I just wonder, in the light of all these baby-girl beauty pageants, and bras for 4-year-olds, exactly what is going on here. It seems physiological changes are actually being reflected in changing social values too, or perhaps the other way around. I wonder if the "ostregenisation" of the environment, and 50 years of The Pill is also to blame.
And you know what's even scarier - parents will start to internally justify these changes when they see them in their kids - no parent wants to think there's anything wrong with their kid, so suddenly this will, perforce, become a sort of badge of honour.
Hormones given to livestock have been linked to early puberty in kids who eat those animals. Order up some more happy meals !
Also there is the increased level of growth hormone in milk from rBGH injected cows. Interesting, what is and what isn't looked at in these studies.
lol mmm mmm yummy happy meals with tasty hormones.
i came down with testicular cancer in 2004 and i think it was very much caused by shit from plastics and being exposed to hormones and other crap.
i try to limit my use of plastics and exposure to other crap.
and we all should feel reassured that the chemical industry says chemicals are not harmful to people. bs
its great to see the epa and the 2 corporate corrupt asshole parties really don't give a crap.
matt
harris county green party
Cows are given an injection of a Muscle tenderizer at the Maximum 2 weeks before slaughter. It is illegal to give the injection more than two weeks prior slaughter because 99% of the cattle develope Cancer if the injection is given longer than two weeks before slaughter.
"I wonder if there are any stats for boys too - are they experiencing the same morphing?"
the effects are different in males. instead of precocious puberty males experience significant sperm count reduction. infact, average male sperm counts are down by 50% since the 1960's.
Though I Believe there may be causation the article showed no causal studies. A racial/breast survey and an environment/toxin survey with no intertie.
Phalates may be much worse for males because they are believed to turn male fish into Hermaphidites.
Phalates may accelerate female processes but they may destroy male development.
Oh yeah OilBomber is working on the Environment with his pro:
Coal
Nuclear Power and new Nuke Weapons
and Offshore OIL drilling
Agenda.
This is happening. My daughter I believe developed young @ 9 and it broke my and wives heart. We both knew it wasn't normal. She also developed thyroid issues, I live in NJ. The poisoned environment is wrecking havoc on us in many way and whose surprised? We've allowed the worst among us to force us all to live in a cesspool of pollutants , as many as 85K new chemical compounds go unregulated just in this country alone. The so called EPA is a sad joke that has long ago been captured by the the polluters because our politicians are crooks and liars.
You should not worry about it so much. It certainly shouldn't have "broken your heart".
Already a insecure kid in a dysfunctional family, my parents freaked out when I went through puberty early. I spent the next 5 years thinking that I was some kind of freak.
This seems like half an article. It starts with a question and leaves so many more unanswered. Did Blacks and Latinas begin to develop early recently, or has that always been the case? Is that statistic more reflective of poverty or race? What about Native American girls who often live in poverty but without the inner city pollutants?
Is early development an evolutionary response to the social phenomenon of pregnancy in younger and younger girls?
For years now I have been observing the increase in breast size in women. Just watch a 30 year old movie to see what I'm talking about. It can't all be due to plastic surgery! Is this an evolutionary response to a fashion trend?
This is a fearsome topic and one that should be more fully researched and explored before drawing conclusions. I would love to see data from 50 or 60 year old women on when they reached puberty, since it seems like there was no research done on this in the 60's and 70's, when I grew up. Or was there? The author doesn't say. I hope there will be more solid data on this topic in the future.
Could the increase in breast size also be due to lack of calories no longer being an issue for most American women? The combination of easily available calories, and more sedentary lifestyles? Breast tissue is to a large part, bodyfat. And bodyfat levels usually play a pretty big role in breast size. Many women athletes are fairly flat chested, especially endurance athletes. Also, women bodybuilders, who usually maintain much lower bodyfat levels than even other female athletes, tend to have this too, to the point that breast augmentation surgery is common among women bodybuilders.
Serious young adult / teenaged female athletes often face the opposite problem from what is described in this article. The combination of intense training, and dieting, often results in delayed puberty, especially of breast development and menses.
"Many women athletes are fairly flat chested, especially endurance athletes."
Funny how sports photographers compete for position at the =Finish Line= to get the best photo of runners bending over to catch their breath.
I had a friend once who believed that if women were not randomly distributed on Earth by breast size the planet would develop a wobble, like a washing machine on spin cycle. After a few drinks we would practice moving them. "Excuse me, could you please stand over HERE, and you, could you please stand over THERE, thanks awfully."
Trylon
I looked at the NY Times article cited in the article we're posting on. It compares the current figures with a 1997 study of the same kind.
I read that, too. "The percentages for blacks and whites were even higher than those found by a 1997 study that was one of the first to suggest that puberty was occurring earlier in girls." No data on Hispanics, I guess.
It's a shame that womens' health data is so confusing, and that 1997 seems to be the first year that anyone was even concerned about this topic.
How about this paragraph from the NYT article:
"Dozens of studies have been published in the years since. Arguments continue, but many doctors accept the idea that heavier girls often develop earlier. And subsequent studies have also found that black and Hispanic girls mature earlier than whites, even when weight is taken into account. No one knows why. Though breasts may be sprouting earlier, the average age of first menstruation, between 12 and 13, has not really changed."
"No one knows why."
This cites a Tufts study showing earlier menarche than average at age 14 in 1900.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/toxic/hormoncancer.cfm
BD, thanks for the link. From the article:
"The federal government maintains the hormones are safe, despite strong misgivings on the part of its own scientists at the Health Protection Branch.
Four scientists with concerns have been placed under orders not to
discuss the issue in public."
Canadians are getting the same quality government oversight that we are, I see.
ELAINE: I moved to Puerto Rico in l977 and there was a concern about BOYS with breasts! The condition was termed "premature thelarche" or something like that. In a macho place like Puerto Rico, boys with breasts was NOT a good thing. Well, it turned out it was the result of too many hormones fed to the chickens they were ingesting!
Our foods are so chemically altered these days. Animals are given hormones and we eat them. The stuff washes through their excrement back out to the water table.
Remember the frogs with weird sex organs? They were being exposed to industrial chemical solvents in little ponds outside of industrial "parks."
If you put together:
The food additives
The food coloring agents
The chemicals provided for "shelf life"
The hormones in animals
The anti-biotics in animals
The sugar (and its fake equivalent)
The fats
The fact that in many regions soil is depleted so that crops grown lack the same levels of nutrition provided in prior decades.
It's possible that mothers taking birth control have remnants of added hormones in their systems and these have passed onto their babies who are now young adults.
I've related this same point in reference to GM foods... because the climate of trespass (against Gaia) is so thick, it is next to impossible to choose ONE singular culprit (from the long list of offenders) to hold responsible for all the nature-bending events taking place.
Imagine if these 9 year old get pregnant?
P.S. Breast augmentation is the #1 surgery in California.
Sioux, the mutant X-Men we have created will surely not look like Hugh Jackman.
We want big boobs, so we get them through hormones or the scalpel, both harmful. Be careful what we wish for.
"Imagine if these 9 year old get pregnant?" Exactly. My 7 year old granddaughter still lapses into "baby talk" every now and then. She needs help taking care of her hamster. Imagine if she were to become a mom in two years. AAAAAAAAK!
Exactly right, Sioux Rose, "the climate of trespass is thick," what an articulate way to phrase it.
I wonder if the freakish developments affecting reproductive systems are the earth's strategy to regulate human out-of-control population growth?
At first glance, 7 yr-olds with developed breasts seem to indicate increased fertility. I suspect though, that it may be an event similar to the extreme and unpredictable weather phase of global warming; a precursor to the cataclysmic change to come.
Possibly the earth is more benevolent than many humans and is gifting us with one more warning before sloughing us off.
"What about Native American girls who often live in poverty but without the inner city pollutants?"
Most of the pollutants that could casue this are agricultural products. Not things found in the city. But, the fact that it is simultaneously prevalent in USAns of two different ethnicities (African and mixed Spanish/native american Latinos) does seem to discount ethnicity being the cause.
Two things do come to mind - in the past few decades, blacks and latinos are disporportionaltely poor, poor children have come to be disporportionaltely overweight, and due to their long work hours, poor USAns consume much more heat-and-eat processed foods and HFCS laden pop, and less fresh foods (and no organics) than better-off USAns.
I believe one of the cited articles mentioned Diazinon, an indoor pest killer for roaches and ants.
One poster has suggested that this is a fearsome topic. Another has suggested that this is the scariest thing ever read on CD. Another said that his daughter developing young broke his heart.
I'm curious why. I'm not saying that this is a good thing, but some of the reactions here seem overwrought.
I suggested it was fearsome. My fear is that it will become the norm for 9 year old girls to be able to reproduce. So far it seems that only breast development is affected, and that the age of menses remains at about 11 or 12.
I have an 11 year old granddaughter who is showing serious signs of puberty. Probably this is a normal age, yet I see what this does to her attitude. I see her one moment as fully childlike, then as the ennui-consumed teenager she will soon become. As grandparents and parents, I believe we mourn the loss of childhood. As a pragmatist I fear what this budding fecundity will inspire in the twisted psyches of child predators as well as the normal desires of young boys.
I wonder if, along with our toxic world, our toxic attitude towards women contributes as much to this change in girls' development.
Can our cultural attitudes and mores effect our evolution? Now that's scary!
Hmm.
I think it would help if you tried to remember how it was for yourself as a child growing into an adolescent into a teenager. Personally, I certainly don't remember going from childlike one moment, into a teen, the next, and then at 18, into an adult.
IMO adults sometimes need to remember that growing up is a process, a journey.
As for the paedophile issue, actually IMO, a young person developing fast would probably discourage paedophiles. Now, I have no desire to try to figure out the why child predators are attracted to children, but it seems to me that they would not go after sexually mature young people. Also, IMO, the paedophile issue nowadays is exaggerated. The desires of her peers, and how all parties handle those desires, would probably be a bigger issue.
" wonder if, along with our toxic world, our toxic attitude towards women contributes as much to this change in girls' development.
Can our cultural attitudes and mores effect our evolution? Now that's scary!"
If those attitudes affect lifestyles, I'd say yes. Asides from what I posted down below to you about breast size and female athletes, I've read somewhere that American women have the largest feet size in the world, especially among young women; this is attributed to the passing of Title IX, and the greater involvement of women in participatory sport. The feet of American women have apparently increased by about one size, compared to 1/3 a size for American men.
Before I respond further, may I ask whether you are a guy or a gal?
How does athletic participation change one's foot size?
And, if it did, it could not be passed on to a child. Such a thing is is called Lamarckian evolution, and is quite discredited. Only genetic traits are passed on, and the trait only becomes more common if it confers a mating or survival advantage. Last I checked, men are not extra-attracted to big-footed women.
And I agree, the earlier puberty age itself is no big deal, certainly not "fearsome", but it might be a coal-mine-canary for something that is bad.
The idea that it would lead to sexual promiscuity (if consensual and if protection is used, is bad how?) seems unfounded.
That it would lead to pedophilia is especially odd.
I'm not saying that it could be passed onto a child.
Athletic participation makes someone's feet bigger, and wider, the same way athletic participation makes someone more muscular. The same way athletic participation makes bones thicker and denser (which is why doctors nowadays recommend older people perform resistance exercises).
The feet get bigger and wider in response to the increased loads they have to support, in response to the much greater forces they are subject to. The bones get thicker and denser. The muscles develope more.
Development may discourage some paedophiles, but if you consider a paedophile to be any adult who has sex with one or more under-age persons, it pretty much has to encourage more than it discourages.
Exactly. That's why I said "child predator". (I know you are responding to rfloh, but you have expressed my thoughts as well.)
"I wonder if, along with our toxic world, our toxic attitude towards women contributes as much to this change in girls' development."
elainem, I am a mom and grandma also, and I've often wondered the same thing....what's the deal with the padded bras in the little girl's departments? What parents buy these for their daughters? Why isn't promoting sexuality to prepubescents before they have developed the capacity to manage it in the category of abuse?
Every human being has the right to a childhood filled with joy and the abandon of innocence. Poverty and exploitation have taken this right from many. Is it culture, chemicals or both that expand the pool of victims?
Iowa, well said! And even when we try to give our children and grandchildren the best upbringing and support, nasty things sneak in through TV, toys/video games, and food. From "Family Guy" to Mylie Cyrus, unsuspecting kids are presented with issues too complex for them to understand, yet they try to emulate their idols. I guess I'm glad I'm not a kid growing up in today's world.
one of the primary hazards of psychologically separating humans, and their activities, from the living world...
as another poster mentions, and a recent CD article implied, vast numbers of unregulated, and undisclosed, chemicals inundate our finite, closed system daily, by our own hand...
couple with the troubles associated with radioactivity and biological structures, and we have set a pretty tough course for the ol' mind and body to successfully navigate...
hard enough for those already here, real hard for the developing fetus foolishly looking forward to joining the party...
we are turning this planet, and ourselves, into something other...
what?
If the males become sterile, it may be nature's way of establishing birth control. PD James has a novel to that effect.
These studies may be more exhaustive but since the late '60s the issues of early puberty for females has been noted. Dermatologists, of all doctor-groups, began anecdotally commenting on this. Severe acne in 10yr old girls, the outward signs associated with the onset of puberty, etc were the canaries in the coal mine. Those birds are long since dead. It(chemical bi-products of oil) is in the foods we eat from industrial farming. The water treatment plants cannot filter these oil-based poisons out. It is in the milk and cheese we give to poor kids as " filler " in the school lunch programs. From the cows given growth hormones to produce more milk to the ground burger, from worn-out, old milk cows, served at MikkeeD's. The profitable, lazy way to produce cheap food by chemical treatments and gov't handouts of throw-away commodities to nominally feed the poor and less fortunate, is disgusting and maybe criminal. You don't need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows the waste products of environmentally disasterous farming practises and industrial food production, thru Dr. Jeykl chemistry. After 2-3 generations of kids not knowing where their food comes from this is the logical result of gov't indifference and deceit. Maybe we should of consulted some dirty hippies 45 yrs ago to tell us this experiment in mass over-population was going to lead to bad outcomes for future generations. Nah, what do they know!
LINK & WILD CARD: Excellent posts. Right on info.
cool
And the fish in the ocean contain mercury.
Seriously - what does it take?
Adulterated mercury, containing fish.
These kinds of problems (such as early development) are completely predictable and exactly what one would expect by introducing massive amounts of chemicals that act like hormones into the environment. (food, personal care products, pesticides, byproducts of combustion, etc.)
And the natural response to such a rapidly changing hormonal environment is, not surprisingly, to reproduce faster. Individuals who reproduce later are much more likely to pass on significant amounts of toxins to their offspring, so again, reproducing early is an adaptive response to a rapidly changing hormonal environment.
The thing is, when you try to tell people that their personal care products contain phthalates and other hormonally active chemicals, they often get angry, and will frequently claim that "I can't live without such and such a product." OK. If that's the choice they want to make, they can certainly do that. And BTW, I have found empirically that this response is fairly consistent regardless of class. It seems the entire culture is brainwashed to think of materials in abstract terms related to their end-uses (foundation, detergent, fragrance, etc.) instead of their actual chemical composition and functional similarity to biologically relevant molecules (e.g. endocrine disrupting chemicals).
So I dispute the causal relationship of early development to race and income. It boils down to basic education and availability of alternatives - which is related to race and class, but it is a consequence, not a cause.
The real environmental injustice happened long ago; in the early 20th century the FDA permitted arsenic-based pesticide residue on apples at levels that were achievable at the time with existing industry practices. The permitted level was completely unrelated to health impacts. That was a clear line in the sand and we stepped over it as a culture. Now, it is legal for chemical companies to literally trespass against us at a chemical level, and there is little we can do about it, short of making more informed purchasing choices. I'm all for class and race analyses where they make sense, but I think in this case, the cart is pulling the horse.
Are you listening, DOW?
THINKING: This is THE big one! Right on.
It has to be chemicals more then obesity. My unscientific guess would be estrogen found in plastic containers and tin can liners.
The same thing was found to be happening among girls in orphanages in Poland in the 1980s while I lived there. Good research was done which traced it to the large amount of hormone-laced chicken that was being fed, quite often, to the girls (because it was cheap and thought to be healthy).
They concluded, way back then, that the earlier puberty was caused by hormones in the meat. They then changed their menus. This is not new information.
Sexiest article EVER,,,,Giggity
Not cool man
Yeah...we should all feel great and secure about how the Obama Admin takes this seriously and will do something about chemicals in the food and obeseity, when the their own daughters attend the fanciest, priceiest prep school in the area(safe from the mean streets of DC) where I'm sure the food is catered by Dean & Dulucca.
It's a no-brainer to remove all of the crap food (which I hear is dumped off on Haiti for "food aid")in schools and replace it with the same quality the Obama girls receive.Besides the ill-effects of early puberty, ADHD has a direct link to shitty food dumped off and ingested in the poorest areas.