Hormones, hormones everywhere: Considering cumulative impacts of hormones in food production

Experience with hormone replacement therapy and with diethylstilbesterol dictates prudence around knowingly exposing people, and especially fetuses or young children, unnecessarily to exogenous hormone. And yet synthetic hormones are commonly and intentionally added to the U.S. food systems, raising concerns about hormone residues in food as well as in surface waters downstream of farms. Among hormonally-active chemicals added to the food supply are dozens of pesticides recognized as known or possible "endocrine disruptors", plastics additives to food packaging such as phthalates and bisphenol A, and steroid growth hormones. The latter chiefly includes several synthetic steroids routinely given to beef cattle to make them grow faster to market weight -- a practice banned in the European Union. Suprisingly, before and even after DES was banned for human use following recognition that in-utero exposure led to higher risks for reproductive cancers, infertility and other impacts later in life, it also was used as an FDA-approved growth promoter in cattle and poultry production in the U.S. Little effort to date has been made to appreciate the cumulative exposure and human risk from these various products and practices. The presenter discusses the known science and what has not yet been studied about cumulative hormone exposures via the food system. In this context, policy options are reviewed, including the need for public health precaution.