A new study has found that residents of certain industrial areas in Canada gave birth to females at a higher rate than males. The industries to which the subjects were exposed – oil refineries, metal smelters, municipal waste incinerators and pulp mills – are all notorious emitters of large quantities of dioxins, a class of pollutant that has been linked to serious health problems.
Dioxins are sometimes referred to as “hormone-mimicking” chemicals because they bind to cellular receptors to form a complex that attaches to the cell’s chromosomes where it can access and change genetic material.
Dioxins have been linked to endocrine-related cancers like breast and uterine because of their ability to alter hormone levels. This access to hormone triggers also leads to a shift in testosterone levels in men, which can affect diabetes rates. Interestingly, Dioxin levels in men and not in women are responsible for the shift in gender birth rates. At a level of 80 parts per trillion, men father twice as many female babies as they do male. This is an extreme scenario, as the reported birth rate in the studied communities is 46% males and 54% females. (The average birth ratio for Canada is 51% males and 49% females).
Dioxins are bioaccumulators. They take a long time to leave the body (eight years, some studies say) and are stored in fat tissue where they remain undisturbed. Though dioxins are air-born pollutants, humans ingest dioxins from animal protein and dairy by eating the fat deposits of animals. The pollutant snowballs up the food chain, leaving humans with very high levels. Thus, the only way to avoid dioxins is to follow a vegan diet.
In addition to reproductive cancers and diabetes, dioxins have also been linked to immune system and thyroid disorders and brain defects in infants.
You can read more about the study conducted in Canadian populations here.
