Astro Hacker News - Dangerous hormone-disrupting chemicals found in US breast milk samples

SubiculumCode |next [-]

The uncomfortable, not even close to proven hypothesis, is that increased exposures to such hormone-disrupting chemicals are associated with an increased incidence of sex- and gender-diverse identities. That might be a good thing...I think sex- and gender-diverse people are wonderful and interesting...but the uncomfortable thought though is what that might imply in terms of the consequences of environmental policies. This topic is so fraught, I think there is a reluctance to engage except for those with an agenda, one side or another.

spcebar |root |parent |next [-]

I don't really see the connection. The article is talking about the effects of these chemicals on infants breastfeeding and the effects on newborns.

While these are endocrine disrupting chemicals, people aren't transgender because their hormones are imbalanced. The reason transgender people do hormone replacement therapies is so that they can change their hormonal balance. If these chemicals were making people trans, baseline blood tests, which you need to take when you start HRT, would tell different stories than they tell. N1, mine were normal, and this aligns with what others I know have experienced.

My guess is that there is an appearance of a greater number of gender diverse people today because culturally we've reached a point where we don't feel like we need to die with the secret of being transgender, rather than because there were proportionally that many fewer transgender people before.

gslepak |root |parent [-]

> people aren't transgender because their hormones are imbalanced. The reason transgender people do hormone replacement therapies is so that they can change their hormonal balance.

Not so sure, it could have to do with their hormones. I recall experiencing mild gender dysphoria during a period when my testosterone was recorded as below normal. When it returned to normal the dysphoria went away. It could be that some choose to say, "Since I think I'm a girl, perhaps I should swing the hormones even further in that direction."

I'm just one data point though, would be curious to hear other's experiences with dysphoria and what their blood work shows.

EDIT: And think about it, it's a logical contradiction to say that "hormones have nothing to do with it but write me an Rx to mess with my hormones so that I'm more of a girl."

piperswe |root |parent |next [-]

Typically, blood work at the beginning of hormone therapy shows sex hormone levels that are normal for the AGAB

spcebar |root |parent |previous [-]

Being transgender represents a misalignment between your internal sense of self and the sex you were born with. Sometimes this is about societal expectations and pressure to conform to gender ideals, sometimes it is about the physical body you were born into/the primary and secondary sex attributes of that body, and often it's both. Hormone replacement therapy is a way of altering the body's secondary sexual attributes to reduce the dysphoria that is cause from the misalignment of ones sense of self and their body.

Doing HRT carries massive life long side effects, which doctors are required to inform patients about. In some places, it requires months of therapy and a doctor's signoff. While I'm sure there are people who have hormonal imbalances, and some of them have perceived gender dysphoria because of it, I find it very unlikely (or at least extremely uncommon) those people would then start taking hormones, given that you have to be _pretty sure_ you're trans before getting near hormones. It seems very unlikely that in the course of a dip in hormone levels where dysphoria was sudden the course of action would be to transition rather than to seek an endocrinologist for answers. If this were common, I would think detransition rates, which many studies have shown to be very low, would be far higher than they are.

Even with 15 years of gender dysphoria, it took me six months post coming out to feel ready to start the hormone conversation, and an additional three months with the prescription sitting in my cabinet before I was ready to actually start taking it. Like I said, my hormonal level baselines were normal for a male.

Edit, RE your edit:

> "hormones have nothing to do with it but write me an Rx to mess with my hormones so that I'm more of a girl."

"Mess with my hormones" is a flippant and inaccurate way to describe a very difficult conversation trans people have with their doctors. You don't start hormones for fun and you don't start them because you're high on estrogen or testosterone. Hormones also don't make you "more of a girl." If you are a trans woman, you are a woman, regardless of whether you are on hormones, have had any kind of sex altering surgery, or have socially transitioned. You take hormones to bring your inward sense of identity outward and reduce the pain that comes from your sense of self not aligning with your appearance and and the societal demands and expectations of your behavior.

teunispeters |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Easy to disprove.

1. who buys USA's milk? USA, largely. Doesn't export enough because doesn't pass standards in most other places.

2. Sex and gender diversity is proven both global and historical.

Therefor, something else is the motivator. Perhaps a drop in colonization-enforced repression? (Historical Europe had more diverse gender identities before the spread of Christianity ... and colonization.... no I don't pair them quite together, but they definitely travelled together)

Edit: don't forget that lactose tolerance is not a majority feature of humans.

junior44660 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Honest question: wonder why this "gender diverse identities" thing is not as prevalent in low income countries, who may be as much impacted by same plastics and chemicals, or maybe more (because of widespread pollution and neglect).

SubiculumCode |root |parent [-]

1st, as I said, this is an unproven hypothesis. 2nd, the dominant impact on reported prevalence rates are 1) social acceptance of those identities, and 2) the relative risk in revealing those identities.

If being stoned to death is the risk faced for being gay, people won't tend to admit to being gay to a researcher.

junior44660 |root |parent [-]

> social acceptance of those identities

Why would it not work the other way too? Maybe the Western society is hell bent on putting people into boxes, whereas people in third world countries are willing to look the other way for minor deviations [sic] as long as they're useful to their family / village / society?

If you didn't imbibe in your children that the only way to be a "man" is to be the jock on the football team, then maybe far less people would be suffering the dysphorias. Just like how exposure to Instagram causes body dysphoria in both young men and women.

Sexuality is so front-and-center in the Western society unlike many of the third world societies which are below in the 'hierarchy of needs'.

o_____________o |root |parent [-]

[flagged]

add-sub-mul-div |root |parent |next |previous [-]

The "increase" could just be that (1) we've evolved enough acceptance for people to come out of the closet and (2) lots of people have adopted neutral pronouns on social media as a way of showing support for the issue, not due to actual gender dysphoria. If you're trying to scare people, all of these people are now "trans".

Just like people are easy to scare about autism being some kind of epidemic when many people (like me) have a diagnosis of only a mild, borderline, or provisional form of it. That never would have been diagnosed until recently or would have been diagnosed as something else.

gslepak |root |parent |previous [-]

[flagged]

actionfromafar |root |parent [-]

The gay frogs were the trauma actors, right?

childofhedgehog |next |previous [-]

These chemicals are so prevalent that there is no way to avoid them without legislature in a country that is destroying the ability to CHOOSE motherhood. So we’re setting ourselves up for forced births where the babies have no choice but to ingest these chemicals which negatively impact them. Hopefully this research leads to action to prevent this, but will likely get swept under a rug.

molsongolden |next |previous [-]

Has anyone seen evidence of lower levels in other countries? I searched for recent studies and it sounds like Canada and the EU have also reported similar findings but there isn't much widespread testing or totally comparable testing across locations.

ComputerGuru |next |previous [-]

Did I miss the link to the study? I was wondering if storage contamination were a possibility? Breast milk storage bags are all plastic, and cheap brands abound.

tokai |root |parent [-]

I'm a bit confused by the article. It seems to be about this study[0]. Its the first item on Toxic Free Future's list of research. But the article states that Ryan Babadi is a lead author of the study, while there's no Babadi on the author list of the Nature publication.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-026-00844-z

SoftTalker |next |previous [-]

I don't understand how The Guardian readers get through a normal day. Every headline on that page is doom-and-gloom news designed to get you to be fearful or panic about it.

bitmasher9 |root |parent |next [-]

Doom-and-gloom, fear and anger are the predominant emotions in the entire journalism industry.

Very few places are doing any just-the-facts reporting.

tokai |root |parent [-]

The articles cover an actual study, that wasn't theoretical but based on data of sampling. What kind of just-the-facts reporting do you actually want?

zer00eyz |root |parent |previous [-]

https://www.whatisepigenetics.com/scarred-for-life-the-epige...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6414251/

I don't think we are biologically far enough removed from "Oh my god, run, bear/snake/lion!"

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1376114/

And we may not be built (biologically) for the level of comfort that the majority of us (more so here on hacker news) live in.

I think the doom and gloom serves a purpose for a lot of people.

Metacelsus |next |previous [-]

Sure, but at what levels? The dose makes the poison, and the article doesn't say

RcouF1uZ4gsC |previous [-]

> The chemicals present a serious risk to infants because they likely interfere with hormones that are critical to newborns’ proper development, and have been found to be harmful at very low levels of exposure. About 92% of 50 samples were contaminated with at least one of the anti-microbials or plasticizers for which researchers checked.

If they were that significantly harmful it would be massively obvious at that level of prevalence.