The Wall Street Journal reports today on the growing trend of young girls entering puberty. The causes of this are complex and controversial but that it is occurring is indisputable. Many experts argue that environmental contaminants are contributing significantly to early puberty among young girls, while others, although accepting them as contributors, do not consider the effects of environmental contaminants to be widespread.
As someone who spent most of my working life in the construction field in one way or another, reaching the dizzying heights of heavy equipment operator at retirement, my knowledge of this subject is limited. But I cannot see how environmental pollution and the industrialization of food production with all its chemical additives in order to shorten the time to market and maximize profits cannot play a role here.
Puberty is the period when a child changes physically, hormonally, and sexually and becomes able to re-produce, and in girls is generally manifested in breast development and the average age is around 9 to 11. Girls as young as 8 are developing breasts, and even pubic hair in some instances. It is accepted that obesity is a factor in early puberty among girls and consumption of fast foods are a factor in obesity, so it comes as no surprise that early puberty is higher among African American girls in the US whose lives are more deeply affected by poverty, racism and all its consequences. Environmental contaminants are also significant factors I would imagine. Our water, food, and air are full of contaminants associated with industrialization. Then there are all the crèmes, medicines, and lotions that we are told are necessary for us to look pretty or lead healthy lives. I cannot see how so many of these are not damaging to our health.
One biologist familiar with the issue comments: “All of the stressors that appear to contribute to early puberty in girls -- obesity, television viewing, sedentariness, family dysfunction, preterm birth, formula-feeding, chemical exposures -- are higher in poor communities and communities of color where poverty, racism, unemployment, and toxic substance exposures are high and access to nourishing food and safe places to exercise is low. In particular, U.S. black children are disproportionately exposed to physical environmental stressors, and it is also this group that reaches puberty earliest among U.S. girls.” *
I remember reading a long time ago about a fisherman who complained about the disfiguration in some of the fishes that he was catching, I think it was in Chesapeake Bay. His complaints fell on deaf ears pretty much but I remember him saying that he had been fishing for years and that there was something wrong with fish that had the sexual characteristics and reproductive organs of both sexes. These abnormalities, including tumors and other cancers, are recognized now as the effects of environmental pollutants. Surely, I say to myself, I don’t need a PhD in environmental science to figure out that turning the Gulf of Mexico in to oil sludge will affect the genetic structure of all life, plant and animal. Prior to the disaster, one hundred and fifty miles out from the Mississippi Delta was known as the “Dead Zone” no life existed there due to the fertilizers and agricultural pollutants that the Mississippi brings to the Gulf from the farmlands.
The stressors that Sandra Steingraber lists above, including the toxic contaminants, are overwhelmingly the product of how society is organized as opposed to “natural” events that are beyond our control. As Theo Colburn points out: “Common wisdom--but no data--suggest that the increasingly overt sexuality of popular media may stimulate earlier sexual development.”**
The same class that owns the means for producing food owns the media she is referring to. It is much easier and more profitable to first create the disease, discover the virus, and then develop the magic cure, than to question the way society is organized or to outright blame capitalism, a system where production is determined not by social need but individual gain. Most of the diseases that people die from in the former colonial world are diseases that are curable but investment in medicine and social infrastructure that would eliminate them is not profitable so people die.
I am not saying that the increase in something like early puberty or the alarming rate of various cancers is due solely to the effects of the capitalist economy on the environment; but I am convinced that eliminating the profit motive will eliminate much of the by-products of it, including wars and hunger.
*The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls: What We Know, What We Need to Know," Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D
** Our Stolen Future
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