Our Stolen Future

In "Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival?--A Scientific Detective Story", three scientists raise an alarm over the proliferation of manmade chemicals in our environment. By mimicking natural hormones, these chemicals threaten to undermine our future. It is a truly captivating and terrifying book, as it makes us realize that danger lies all around us--in the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the food we eat.

A good part of the book gives us details of sinister signs in wildlife--bald eagles born deformed, beluga whales whose level of PCBs qualify them as hazardous waste, polar bears and seals whose reproduction rate is in decline, dolphins succumbing to epidemics, frogs disappearing. In addition to habitat loss and changing climate, endocrine-disrupting chemicals are a major threat to the world's biodiversity.

But hormone-disrupting chemicals do not just threaten wildlife; they "act broadly and insidiously to sabotage fertility and development" of humans as well, as indicated by the drop in sperm count and increase in sperm abnormalities. The fact that such chemicals have profound effects on the fetus is even more serious a concern, as contaminants accumulated in a woman's body are transfered through gestation and and breast milk. The authors suggest that abnormal tendencies in our society such as increase in learning problems, attention deficit disorders, aggression and violence are possible long-term effects such hormones have on people. As Sandra Steingraber has eloquently informs us in "Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood", environmental hazards threaten each crucial stage of infant development.

In my view, "Our Stolen Future" is just as important as "Our Common Future" aka the the Brundtland Report (published in 1987), which placed environmental issues on the political agenda. As the authors themselves imply, the book should be considered a sequel to the groundbreaking work by Rachel Carlson. The major difference between this book and Carlson's is the call for the need to "move beyond the cancer paradigm", because hormone-disrupting chemicals are not classical poisons or typical carcinogens that kill people or make people sick; rather, they "diminish individuals without making them sick". Such "deficits" can have serious consequences over not just the lifetime of individuals but for the society as a whole. The authors raise concern of the "power of hormone-disrupting chemicals to undermine and alter the characteristics that make us uniquely human--our behavior, intelligence, and capacity for social organization".

Since it was published over ten years ago, "Our Stolen Future" has drawn widespread attention to the issue of hormone-disrupting chemicals, and has been successful in influencing government policies in the US and elsewhere. See http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/ for the latest developments in the field of endocrine disruptor scientific research. Both "Our Stolen Future" and "Having Faith" should be mandatory reading for everyone and anyone who cares about our future and our environment. It is the responsibility of each and every single one of us to keep ourselves informed; after all, as the authors state, "children have a right to be born chemical-free".