Following International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8, the poignant findings on women, gender and hazardous substances in a United Nations (U.N.) report raise critical issues of concern and cause for urgent action to phase out petrochemicals.
The “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes,” by Marcos Orellana, was delivered to the 79th Session of the U.N. General Assembly in July 2024.
Excerpts from the report follow:
“Women make up roughly 60 to 70 per cent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries where pesticides and pesticide handling are especially poorly regulated. In Zambia, for example, two thirds of the labour force is engaged in agriculture, and 78 per cent are women farmers and peasants.
“Women there play a significant role in pesticide application, often without any or adequate personal protective equipment, especially during activities such as weeding, harvesting, and washing pesticide-laden clothes.
“In higher-income countries, women who do agricultural work are often poor and/or migrants; pesticides are one of many dimensions of marginalization and damage to their well-being. The European agriculture sector uses many seasonal and migrant women from Northern Africa, for example.
“Strawberries have some of the highest pesticide residues in the European Union, and women working with strawberries have also reported trafficking and sexual abuse.
“Some of the most serious impacts of exposure to pesticides concern female reproductive health damage. Exposures to hazardous pesticides during pregnancy can cause miscarriages, premature births, birth anomalies and low birthweight.
“In one study in Argentina, women exposed to chlorpyrifos experienced miscarriage at 4.7 times the rate of other women. Men also face reproductive damage from pesticides, for example reductions in sperm quality.
“A recent Brazilian study found that pesticides generated a wide spectrum of reproductive health problems, such as male and female infertility, endocrine disruption, some types of cancer, germ cell mutations, damage to pregnancy and fetal development, effects on child development and puberty and transgenerational effects, among others.”
The regulation of (or failure to restrict) toxic chemicals poses disproportionate harm to women.
Pesticides’ adverse effects on women, inadequate regulatory recognition of elevated pesticide risks to women, and the gaps in research related to pesticides and women’s health must empower a louder and larger driving force in the elimination of petrochemical pesticide and fertilizer use and transition to organic practices.
Among the most compelling reasons to act to eliminate petrochemical pesticides is the data, collected by the American Cancer Society, which establishes that breast cancer is the most common cancer in the U.S.
We know from the large number of studies that toxic chemicals, and pesticides in particular, contribute significantly to this tragic reality. Genetic factors play only a minor role in breast cancer incidences, while exposure to external environmental factors (i.e., chemical exposure) may play a more notable role.
For breast cancer, one in 10 women will receive a diagnosis, and genetics can only account for 5% to 10% of cases. Therefore, it is essential to understand how external stimuli — like environmental pollution from pesticides — can drive breast cancer development.
Most types of breast cancers are hormonally responsive and thus dependent on the synthesis of either estrogen or progesterone. Hormones generated by the endocrine system — and the synthetic chemicals that mimic them — greatly influence breast cancer incidents among humans.
Several studies and reports, including U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data, identify hundreds of chemicals as influential factors associated with breast cancer risk.
Pesticides disproportionately affect women’s health in many ways, including ovarian and breast cancer, spontaneous abortion, stillbirths and other negative birth outcomes, developmental effects and adverse neurodevelopment (brain function and development) among infants.
Notably, many of these health effects are hormonally responsive. Chemicals that act like hormones — endocrine disruptors (EDC) — may cause or contribute to these problems.
EDCs are chemicals that can, even at low exposure levels, disrupt normal hormonal (endocrine) function.
EDCs function by: (1) mimicking the action of a naturally produced hormone, such as estrogen or testosterone, thereby setting off similar chemical reactions in the body; (2) blocking hormone receptors in cells, thereby preventing the action of natural hormones; or (3) affecting the synthesis, transport, metabolism and excretion of hormones, thus altering the concentrations of natural hormones.
EDCs include many pesticides, exposures to which have been linked to infertility and other reproductive disorders, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and early puberty, as well as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and childhood and adult cancers.
EDCs can wreak havoc not only on humans but also, on wildlife and ecosystems.
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In 1996 Congress required the EPA to determine whether pesticides disrupted the endocrine systems of humans and other organisms. The EPA in February 2024 issued a proposal for modifying its approach to the implementation of the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program.
On Oct. 11, 2024, the EPA published a notice of a proposed partial settlement agreement and consent decree in response to a suit by the Center for Food Safety on behalf of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, et al., challenging the agency’s failure to test and regulate endocrine-disrupting pesticides.
EPA’s proposal was an abrogation of EPA’s responsibilities under the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act; the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act; as well as the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act; and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Limiting the scope of the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program to humans, certain pesticide active ingredients only, and limiting the types of data to assess EDC effects is contrary to the congressional intent and requirements in these statutes.
It is also a reversal of the Endocrine Disruptor Screening and Testing Advisory Committee’s advice and the agency’s original Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program implementation policy and science decisions.
While the consent decree does commit EPA to test for estrogenic effects in conventional pesticide active ingredients, it falls far short of addressing the full range of endocrine disrupting effects of all pesticide ingredients, as is required to protect human health and the environment. The February 2024 comments of Beyond Pesticides detail these requirements.
Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, a pesticide is presumed to pose an unreasonable risk until reliable data demonstrate otherwise.
If the EPA lacks the data and/or resources to fully evaluate endocrine risks to human health and wildlife, then it is obliged to suspend or deny any pesticide registration until it has sufficient data to demonstrate no unreasonable adverse endocrine risk.
The history and status of endocrine disruption research are summarized in Beyond Pesticides’ comments and the Oct. 29, 2024, Daily News post. Evidence that synthetic chemicals can mimic or otherwise interfere with natural hormones has existed for over half a century.
Although early attention was given to estrogen mimics, it soon became apparent that the homeostatic function of the endocrine system — which regulates and balances physiological functions — can be disrupted at many sites and hormone systems.
Endocrine disruption as a phenomenon affecting humans and other species has been critically reviewed by several authors.
A common thread weaving across these reviews is the notion that chemicals that may disrupt the endocrine systems of humans and wildlife may be pervasive in contaminating their habitats.
A pandemic of endocrine-related disorders from ADHD, autism, diabetes, obesity, childhood cancers, testicular cancer in young men, infertility, male dysgenesis syndrome, hypospadias, low sperm count, loss of semen volume and sperm quality, and increased risk of testicular and prostate cancer can be connected with EDCs.
All these disorders have been increasing in incidence and can be traced back to prenatal exposure to EDCs.
Endocrine pathways are largely conserved across species and, thus, are not species- or taxa-specific. It is well-known that thyroid endocrinology in particular is well conserved across vertebrate taxa. This includes aspects of thyroid hormone synthesis, metabolism, and mechanisms of action.
Thyroid hormones are derived from the thyroid gland through regulation of the HPT axis, which is controlled through a complex mechanism of positive and negative feedback regulation.
Multiple pathways contribute to the synthesis of thyroid-releasing hormone, including thyroid hormone signaling through feedback mechanisms; leptin and melanocortin signaling; body temperature regulation; and cardiovascular physiology.
Each pathway directly targets thyroid-releasing hormone neurons. Based on the conservation of endocrine pathways, it is well understood that the ecological assays (the frog assay in particular) are often more sensitive and equally relevant to mammalian assays in informing risk assessors on whether a chemical can perturb and cause adverse endocrine outcomes in the human population and vice versa.
The Food Quality Protection Act amends the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act to ensure potential endocrine-disrupting effects are considered in agency risk assessments to fulfill the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act mandate that a pesticide registration will not cause unreasonable adverse effects.
This applies to humans and wildlife and all pesticide chemicals as defined in the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, including “all active and pesticide inert ingredients of such pesticide.” The Safe Drinking Water Act addresses drinking water contaminants as well.
EPA must make use of all available scientifically relevant endocrine disruption research findings and avoid deviating from established international efforts for screening/testing endocrine disruptors that incorporate human and wildlife-relevant studies.
Recognizing that mammalian data informs potential endocrine disruption in other vertebrate taxa (avian, amphibian, fish) and vice versa, the agency should not decouple the mammalian from other vertebrate assays in the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program screening.
There are more than 50 different ecological and mammalian assays included in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development Conceptual Framework for screening/testing endocrine disrupting effects, and there are additional assays being developed for consideration as well.
So, the agency should not limit the range or types of data to be used, but as the Food Quality Protection Act prescribes use “appropriate validated test systems and other scientifically relevant information.”
Many studies have long demonstrated that childhood and in-utero exposure to DDT increases the risk of developing breast cancer later in life. Many current-use pesticides and chemical contaminants play a role in similar disease prognoses, including mammary tumor formation.
Recent research from the Silent Spring Institute links 28 different EPA-registered pesticides with the development of mammary gland tumors in animal studies. Many of these chemicals are endocrine disruptors and thus have implications for breast cancer risk.
A 2020 study reveals that exposure to acetylcholinesterase inhibitors like organophosphates can cause sex-specific differences in depression symptoms among adolescent girls through endocrine disruption.
Furthermore, this study demonstrates that, in the general population, organophosphate exposure causes an increased risk of total cancer for female non-smokers, breast cancer for female smokers and prostate cancer for male smokers from organophosphate exposure.
Tell Congress to insist on eliminating pesticides that endanger women’s health.
Proper prevention practices, like buying, growing and supporting organics, can eliminate exposure to toxic pesticides.
Organic agriculture has many health and environmental benefits, as it curtails the need for chemical-intensive agricultural practices.
Regenerative organic agriculture nurtures soil health through organic carbon sequestration, preventing pests and generating a higher return than chemical-intensive agriculture.
For more information on why organic is the right choice, see the Beyond Pesticides webpage, Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture.
Originally published by Beyond Pesticides.
