Fwd: [WV-Updates] where are the boys?

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> 1. Fwd: [sANET-MG] where are the boys?

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Chemical agriculture may also be causing the loss of

boys. One main concern in Canada is the impact on Jr.

Hockey. It is little surprise that in this years

Olympics the Canadian Women's team was farm superior

to the Man's.

Pollution: Where have all the baby boys gone?

Every year, thousands of British babies who should be

boys are born girls.

The answer to this mystery could lie in a small town

in Canada.

 

Geoffrey Lean reports

The Independent

Published: 02 April 2006

 

Something very strange is happening in a small but

ighly polluted Canadian community. And it may explain

why every year thousands of British babies who should

be boys are born as girls instead.

> >

Young boys are becoming hard to find on the Chippewa

Indian reservation in the gritty town of Sarnia, in

Ontario's " Chemical Valley " . It boasts four children's

softball teams, but three of them are made up entirely

of girls.

> >

Rsearch shows that the number of boys being born to

the community has been dropping precipitously for the

past 13 years, while the proportion of baby girls has

risen. Now there are twice as many female births as

male ones, though nature normally keeps the sexes in

balance.

> >

Scientists increasingly believe that pollution is to

blame and that what has happened here - and among some

other highly contaminated groups of people in other

countries - may solve an enduring mystery of " missing

boys " in maternity units throughout the industrialised

world.

> >

>Normally, and with remarkable consistency around the

globe, 106 boys are born for every 100 girls; the

excess is thought to be nature's way of compensating

for the fact that males were more likely to be killed

through >hunting and conflicts.

> >

But this figure has been slowly declining in rich

countries over the past quarter of a century. In

Britain it has fallen to about 105 since 1977 -which

suggests that every year more than 3,000 babies are

born as girls instead boys. Studies have revealed much

the same story in the US, Canada, the Netherlands and

the Scandinavian countries.

> >

Suggested explanations have included increasing stress

and rising numbers of single mothers; women in

difficulties, it has been found, produce more girls

than boys. But what is happening in Sarnia, on the US

Canadian border, is increasingly turning the spotlight

on pollution.

> >

The Chippewa Indians of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation

Community have long lived in the area, on the southern

tip of Lake Huron, not far from Detroit. Their right

to the land was confirmed in 1827, but much of it was

taken over by industry in the 1960s.

> >

Now their woods and homes are entirely surrounded by

one of the world's most extensive petrochemical

complexes, producing 40 per cent of Canada's entire

output of plastics, synthetic rubber and other

chemical compounds.

The air stinks, and the ground is contaminated with

high levels of dangerous pollutants.

> >

It was those softball teams that first got the 870

people of the community thinking that many more girls

than boys were being born. Among them was Ada

Lockridge, a 42-year-old home help aide, who sits on

the community's council. She and her sister had eight

daughters between them, and only one son.

> >

She started counting all the babies born to the

community since 1984, Until 1993 girls and boys were

in normal balance, but then the number of male births

started plummeting. " I felt like I wanted to throw

up, " she says. " I did a lot of crying. And then I got

angry. "

> >

She joined up with researchers from the University of

Ottawa and together they published an article in a

leading scientific journal. It reported " a significant

ongoing decrease in the number of male births

beginning in the early 1990s " .

> >

Only 35 per cent of babies now are boys, and there is

no sign of the decline levelling off. The study could

not prove a cause, but pointed the finger at " multiple

chemical exposures over the years " .

> >

Other, non-native communities downwind of the complex

also have less dramatic reductions in male births,

while those upwind do not. And many studies have shown

sex changes in fish and wildlife in the lake nearby.

> >

Ada Lockridge points to a fire and chemical release at

one of the chemical plants in 1993 as a possible

culprit.

> >

The findings tally with other research around the

world. People exposed to high levels of dioxin in the

1976 accident in Seveso, Italy, also have twice as

many girl as boy children. The same is true for

Russian men exposed to pesticides containing the

chemical.

> >

And Brazilian scientists have reported that the

proportion of boy babies fell in the most polluted

parts of the city of São Paulo.

> >

Professor Shanna Swan of the University of Rochester,

New York - not far from Sarnia - says that levels of

contamination on the reservation are " incredible " and

that the " first assumption " must be that they are to

blame. She believes that changing sex ratios may often

provide an indication of dangerous pollution, and that

low levels of exposure to such ubiquitous chemicals as

dioxins and PCBs may explain the decline in boys in

industrialised countries.

> >

Additional reporting by Martin Mittelstaedt in Ontario