After a series of alarming reports over the past year publicizing potential health threats from hormone-mimicking environmental chemicals, scientists in Japan are springing to action. Last week a group of researchers held the opening meeting of what they claim is the world's first scientific society dedicated to so-called endocrine disrupters.
Endocrine disrupters have become suspects in a variety of reproductive anomalies (such as hermaphroditic polar bears-see related story) in recent years. The issue took to the front pages in Japan last year after an Environment Agency study identified 67 chemicals commonly found in the environment as possible endocrine disrupters. A recent study also found that in Japan, as elsewhere, men's sperm counts may be on the decline.
But scientists still have little data to link endocrine disrupters with observed health effects. "It is more of a social phenomenon than a scientific one" at this point, says Hideyuki Kobayashi of the Environment Agency. The agency plans this year to spend 4 billion yen ($28 million) to set up a center at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba to study, among other things, whether there is a correlation between the concentration of suspected endocrine disrupters in a man's body and the size of his testes. Other government organs are rushing to fund everything from wildlife surveys to basic molecular studies.
The new Japan Endocrine Disrupters Society wants to provide a forum for interested parties and set the agenda for this emerging research field. The society and the Environment Agency are planning an international conference on endocrine disrupters to be held in Kyoto in December (details to be posted next month at mx.eic.or.jp/eanet/index-e.html).
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