Environmental health perspectives

BACKGROUND: An equivocal literature exists regarding the relation between persistent organochlorine pollutants (POPs) and endometriosis in women, with differences attributed to methodologies. OBJECTIVES: We assessed the association between…

BACKGROUND: Perinatal exposure to low-doses of bisphenol A (BPA) results in alterations in the ovary, uterus, and mammary glands and in a sexually dimorphic region of the brain known to be important for estrous cyclicity. OBJECTIVES: We ai…

BACKGROUND: Human exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) remains widespread. PCBs have been associated with adverse reproductive health outcomes including reduced fecundability and increased risk of pregnancy loss, although the human …

BACKGROUND: Phthalates are ubiquitous chemicals used in consumer products. Some phthalates are reproductive toxicants in experimental animals, but human data are limited. OBJECTIVE: We conducted a cross-sectional study of urinary phthalate…

BACKGROUND: Endometriosis, a gynecologic disorder affecting 8-10% of reproductive-age women in the United States, is defined as the presence of endometrial tissue outside the uterus and is linked to pelvic pain and infertility. Environmenta…

BACKGROUND: Bisphenol A (BPA) is one of the highest-volume chemicals produced worldwide, and human exposure to BPA is thought to be ubiquitous. Thus, there are concerns that the amount of BPA to which humans are exposed may cause adverse he…

BACKGROUND: Endometriosis is a common gynecologic disease characterized by the ectopic growth of endometrial tissue. In industrialized countries, it affects approximately 10% of women of reproductive age. Its etiology is unclear, but a mult…

BACKGROUND: Exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals during critical developmental periods causes adverse consequences later in life; an example is prenatal exposure to the pharmaceutical diethylstilbestrol (DES). Bisphenol A (BPA), an en…

BACKGROUND: Environmental toxicants are allegedly involved in decreasing semen quality in recent decades; however, definitive proof is not yet available. In 1976 an accident exposed residents in Seveso, Italy, to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-…

BACKGROUND: Atrazine is a potent endocrine disruptor that increases aromatase expression in some human cancer cell lines. The mechanism involves the inhibition of phosphodiesterase and subsequent elevation of cAMP. METHODS: We compared ste…

Atrazine is a potent endocrine disruptor that both chemically castrates and feminizes male amphibians. It depletes androgens in adult frogs and reduces androgen-dependent growth of the larynx in developing male larvae. It also disrupts norm…

We measured tumor-associated proteins (TAPs) and pollutants in blood, serum, and urine of 200 nonsmoking women 50-65 years of age, residing in the rural municipality of Peer or in Hoboken or Wilrijk, industrial suburbs of Antwerp, Belgium. …

In 1976, a chemical plant explosion near Seveso, Italy, resulted in the highest known exposure to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) in residential populations. In 1996, we initiated the Seveso Women's Health Study (SWHS), a histori…

Detection, quantification, and prognosis of environmental exposures in humans has been vastly enhanced by the ability of epidemiologists to collect biospecimens for toxicologic or other laboratory evaluation. Ease of collection and level of…

Under the auspices of the Society for Women's Health Research, a thought leaders' roundtable was convened at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in October 2002 to discuss recent advances in environmental health research…

In this article we consider the importance of assessing endocrine disruption in a large new cohort that has been proposed, the National Children's Study (NCS). We briefly review evidence that endocrine disruption is a potentially important …

Azole compounds play a key role as antifungals in agriculture and in human mycoses and as non-steroidal antiestrogens in the treatment of estrogen-responsive breast tumors in postmenopausal women. This broad use of azoles is based on their …

Using data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, we assessed measures of puberty in U.S. girls in relation to blood lead levels to determine whether sexual maturation may be affected by current environmental lead …

Stressors as subtle as night work or shift work can lead to irregular menstrual cycles, and changes in reproductive hormone profiles can adversely affect bone health. This study was conducted to determine if stresses associated with the dis…