Healthy skin or healthy hormones - is that the choice our bath, body and cosmetics products are forcing us to make?  In our looks-fixated, aging averse society, we hold our personal care products in great esteem.  “Moisturize away dry skin and wrinkles!”  We dutifully obey the marketing as we apply these creamy concoctions into every crevice.  However, now the emphasis on skin vigor is becoming tempered with worry over endocrine health as ingredients in these products are shown to be hormonally active.  And its not just moisturizing lotion: cosmetics, fragrances, deodorant and even sun block need closer scrutiny.   

 The reality is that in any given product, 90% or more of the ingredients are non-toxic.  The typical surfactants, emulsifiers, oils and fragrances are generally safe.   However, as with many things, the devil is in the details and it’s the small percentage items which are most worrisome.   The question is whether there is enough of a chemical dose in every squirt to add up to an endocrine disrupting effect.  Emerging evidence suggests that in certain cases, this can occur.    

 What type of endocrine effect might arise from daily use of personal care products?  The predominant trend appears to be towards feminization: making boys less male and increasing a women’s estrogen dose to the point where it becomes a risk for breast cancer.  It turns out that the most common endocrine disruptors in our consumer products either mimic estrogen or inhibit testosterone, and thus have the potential to tip the balance toward female traits.  Reports of the feminization of fish in water bodies that receive sewage outfalls are increasingly common. The estrogens in sewage are varied, some appear to come from our cleaning products (e.g., alkylphenol ethoxylate in dish soap and detergent), some from body products such as sunscreen, and some from the estrogens women excrete from taking birth control pills.  Fish feminization is the hormonal handwriting on the wall, a signal that we are using estrogenic products capable of  shifting the balance of nature, both external and internal, to female traits. 

 This is not good news for the male of our species, whose earliest sexual development occurs in a female, estrogenic environment, the womb.  To counteract this, there are critical periods in which the primitive fetal testes secretes testosterone; these exquisitely timed pulses of male hormone ensure proper development of the penis and testicles.   Unfortunately, phthalates, a common ingredient in fragrances, cosmetics, deodorant and lotions, impair the male gonad and prevents the secretion of testosterone; the result is that our boys may be less male (feminized) at birth.  This is the tentative conclusion stemming from a 2005 study of 85 mother-child pairs in which the amount of phthalate in the mother during pregnancy was a good predictor of gonadal measurements in the male offspring.  This association is strengthened by the similar findings in laboratory animals.  Does this explain the increasing rates of penile birth defects (hypospadias) and male infertility?  Clearly more study is needed, but the precautionary approach used by the Europeans to remove the most worrisome phthalates from personal care products is a step in the right direction. 

 Then we have the evidence from a Colorado doctors office of three boys who developed breast enlargement, apparently from an overuse of common lotions and hair gels.  Testing of ingredients in these products found that the scented oils, lavender and tea tree, are weakly estrogenic, leading to the supposition that these are what caused such inappropriate breast growth.  However, given the mixture of hormonally active agents that can be present inside any pump bottle, no one knows the totality of the estrogenic dose to these boys.  Fortunately, breast size returned to normal when the products were discontinued.  

 One could go on to describe our unnecessary exposure to parabens and benzophenones in lotion and sunblock, trichlosan (antibacterial in everything from toothpaste to dish soap and deodorant) and the still too prevalent bis-phenol A.  This latter chemical was designed in the early 1930s as a synthetic estrogen but instead has ended up in food  can liners and polycarbonate bottles.   The point is that when all these tiny doses of external estrogen are bundled together with the phytoestrogens naturally in food, we may be nudging girls towards breast cancer and boys towards infertility.   U.S. officials so far seem to consider any one product or type of chemical too trivial to regulate.  However, there is a clear need for wholistic thinking and an aggressive research program to determine if we have created an iceberg of disease in a sea of endocrine disruption. 

By Mike Magee, MD

During the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Clean Water Act in 2002, 30 "national water heroes” were singled out for recognition. Don Elder was one of them. Today Don serves as president of the River Network, a national organization that supports the efforts of state and local river conservation organizations. In April, I joined a small group of health environmentalists to hear what was on Don's mind these days, since he has historically been one step ahead of everyone else. What I heard surprised me.

According to Don, the two great global and social issues of our day are climate change and water availability, and their solution is inseparably integrated. If we don’t act fast, we face catastrophic impact: The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a 4 to 5 degree rise in temperature and an 11 to 23 inch rise in sea levels by the end of the century if we maintain our current course.

Added to climate change and water is our vexing energy situation – and it is intertwined with them, as well. But Don is optimistic. He believes that the fastest way to save energy, and in turn address climate change, is to save water. He says: "Saving energy by saving water will keep coal and oil in the ground, carbon out of the air, water in our streams, and money in our pockets.” And he has the facts to prove it.

We are incredibly wasteful with water in the United States, using 200 gallons a day for every man, woman and child. But Don says we could decrease per-capita water consumption in America by 20% in 10 years, 50% in 25 years and 75% in 50 years.

How is that possible and what's in it for us? If you are like me, you're not immediately seeing the connection between water and energy consumption. But in a nutshell, Don’s thesis is that we consume enormous amounts of energy in processing water in the United States – everything from pumping it, transporting it, capturing it and cleansing it – and we could lower these energy costs dramatically through new water policies. You would also be amazed to know how much energy you use heating and dumping water in your home. Each sink of hot water for dishes, each toilet-flush, consume more energy than you think.

Water is energy – that’s the bottom line message. Don outlines all kinds of strategies for saving water and energy, thus impacting the climate. Example: In the future, as we replace appliances and water systems, we'll be going to systems that reuse and recycle. So the water you use to shower will be able to be used to flush a toilet. Experts refer to this as a “grey water” concept. And there are lots of other ideas, which I explain in this week’s video, embedded with this blog post. You can also read about them in the full transcript, below.

It seems to me that if we want to get off of foreign oil or want our air to be clean of carbon, we should be thinking about water. What do you think? Leave a comment and let me know.