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Press Release
Call for action to reduce uncertainties and risks concerning reproductive health due to endocrine disrupters
There is increasing evidence and concern about rising trends of reproductive ill health in wildlife and humans, and some chemical substances have been implicated, but there are great uncertainties about the causes of reproductive ill health, which require an integrated European research and monitoring effort.
This is the main conclusion of a report from the European Environment Agency (EEA), the European Commission, WHO , OECD & Environment Ministries from the UK, Sweden, The Netherlands1.
Key conclusions are :
"Policy makers and the public need to be aware of "early warnings" about potentially serious and irreversible health and environmental hazards", said Domingo Jiménez - Beltrán, Executive Director, the European Environment Agency2. "The Agency will now be helping to develop the European-wide strategy for monitoring chemicals in the environment and in particular potential endocrine disrupting substances (EDS), focusing on particular puzzles such as why testicular cancer rates in some EU neighbouring countries, for example, Finland and Denmark3, are so different. Our future work on pooling best practice in clean production and chemical exposure reduction will help businesses and others to implement cost-effective measures for reducing any possible risks to reproductive health from these substances", said Mr Jiménez - Beltrán. As "many EDS' have toxic effects other than their potential for damaging reproductive health, precautionary action in reducing exposures to them now could produce multiple benefits."
Denmark helped initiate this "early warning" on EDS' when Professor Niels Skakkebaek published his report on the striking decline in sperm counts amongst males world wide between 1940 and 19904. "This early work has now been recognised as pointing to potentially serious health effects from Endocrine Disrupters, but as the report makes clear, we must do much more research before cause and effect can be elucidated. For example, it is possible that these reproductive problems could be caused by something other than Endocrine disrupting substances, e.g. stress and other aspects of lifestyle", said Professor Skakkebaek. "We are leading a European consortium of scientists who are trying to implement some of the report's recommendations such as an international data bank on semen quality." 5
Further information is available from David Gee at the EEA (+45) 33 36 71 42 (home 35 26 27 16); and Professor Skakkebaek at the Dept. of Growth and Reproduction Rigshospitalet, the National University Hospital of Denmark, tel (+45) 35 45 50 85 or home 42 95 85 07; Canice Nolan, European Commission, DG XII (+32 2) 296 16 33, and Philippe Bourdeau, Chair, EEA Scientific Committee, tel (+32 2) 650 43 22 / 23.
1Report from the
"European Workshop on the impact of Endocrine Disrupters on Human
Health and Wildlife", published by DG XII, European Commission, April
16th 1997. It is available from the European Environment
Agency and the European Commission, and the UK Dept. of
Environment.
It contains the conclusions and proceedings of a workshop held in
Weybridge UK on December 2-4, 1996.
2The EEA was set
up in 1993 in Copenhagen to provide objective, reliable and comparable
information for those concerned with framing and implementing European
and national environmental policy, and for the public. It is funded by
the European Union but its coverage extends beyond the EU 15 countries
to include Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, who are represented on
the EEA Management Board, and to other countries of Central &
Eastern Europe, provided the resources are made available.
3The report
observed that "no adverse trend in semen quality" in Finland had been
noticed; and that the "incidents of testicular cancer in Finland are
four times lower than in Denmark", p.13.
4Carlsen, E., Giwercman, A., Keiding, N. & Skakkebaek, N.E. (1992) Evidence for decreasing quality of semen during past 50 years . Brit. Med. J., 305 609-613.
5The semen data bank is being developed with professor Niels Keiding of the Dept. of Biostatistics of the Panum Institute, Copenhagen.
For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/media/newsreleases/endocr.html or scan the QR code.
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