-Environmental endocrine disrupters!-

A must-read publication for researchers, chemical substance managers, and regional governments!
This report introduces in detail to as wide an extent as possible, as well as tracing back into the past, how organizations and organs in the U.S. and Europe engaged in issues regarding external cause endocrine disrupting substances, or so-called environmental endocrine disrupters, have been interpreting these various issues and what activities they have conducted to date.

The organizations and organs surveyed do not only include major administrative and international organizations-also included are the major activities of private sector environmental preservation groups, the chemical industry, and furthermore the scientific world.

The main reason why the efforts of Europe and the U.S. have been traced back into the past was because there were doubts as to whether the approach outlined in the Strategic Programs on Environmental Endocrine Disrupters '98 (SPEED '98), which was announced as a policy measure by the Ministry of Environment in May 1998, was scientifically or administratively appropriate as a means of coping with the problem given the very many scientifically unclear parameters.
The approach of the Ministry of Environment's policy measure has many things in common with the grounds for arguments of publications for the general public that were published en masse in Japan from the fall of 1997 through 1998, and there is also the aspect that it is very similar to the reasoning of Our Stolen Future (September 1997; published by Shoeisha) written by Theo Colborn.

The basic doubts regarding environmental endocrine disrupter issues as related by these publications are given below, and the abovementioned publications give almost no consideration these doubts.
Have occurrences of endometritis and undescended testis, or sperm concentration (number of sperm in 1 mL of semen) really been increasing or decreasing over the past ten years? In addition, what exogenous and endogenous factors are these health hazards most easily influenced by?
Regarding estrogenicity components (e.g., daidzein, genistein) in food products, is there are necessity to evaluate health risks?
Can substances with very low hormonal activities (e.g., bisphenol A) exhibit hormonal activity that is similar to natural hormones and disturb endocrine systems in situations where natural hormones exist in the living body?

In order to clear up these doubts, it is not sufficient to consider data announced only in Japan.
For this reason, the data and activities of various overseas organizations and organs engaged in these issues were investigated primarily using the Internet, and in the main, the viewpoints of them regarding these points were analyzed.

This report introduces in as much detail as possible the opinions and activities of various organizations and organs related to environmental endocrine disrupter issues, as well as the actual circumstances of scientific fact, and includes the results obtained from such research work.

Words of recommendation of Tokyo University Professor Emeritus Taijiro Matsushima
Endocrine-disrupting chemical substances (also know as the so-called environmental endocrine disrupter problem) are chemical substances that exist in the environment that are suspected of adversely affecting human health (reproductive diseases, cancer, sperm count, etc.) and causing maldevelopment in wildlife through their endocrine-disrupting effects. However, very few examples exist where the cause and effect relationship of them has been proven, and there are many issues still yet to be resolved.
This publication is based on the wealth of experience of the author related to chemical substance safety assessment and risk assessment at Mitsubishi Chemical and the Japan Chemical Industry Association and incorporates an analysis of a vast amount of data including the latest information collected from the Internet. The historical flow, global trends, international countermeasures, and administrative measures related to environmental endocrine disrupter issues are analyzed in details, and what is understood at present, what needs to be understood, and what problem points need to be solved are clearly indicated. This is a must read not only for environmental endocrine disrupter researchers, but also for those persons working as chemical substance administrator, and those with an interest in this subject.

Letters of recommendation have been received from the following professors.