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When Gloria Serce, a peasant women from South Cotabato in the Philippines, first joined her communities' land occupation of a 28.9 hectre piece of abandoned property belonging a rich landlord, she knew one thing - she wanted to grow food and produce, her way, on land she had a right to hold . Now widowed at 47, she has maintained the right to own her small piece of property. She made the decision to grow crops like rice, without using chemical pesticides and other chemicals. Her ambitions are sometimes thwarted - the black bug and golden kuhol snail are formidable foes - but she still opts for lesser to no use of chemical pesticides. Another challenge to her efforts is the fact that the landlord who owns the corn field next to the community insists on spraying pesticides - there is understandable frustration for those wanting to go organic.

When asked about any increase in yields, Gloria is forthright, "only a little" she replies. So if planting crops the way she has chosen to does not really increase her yields why does she do it? "It's more ecological, it gives the soil back its fertility, and it's safer for health!" answers Gloria, a little incredulous that these things had to be explained. She grows yellow corn to sell to animal feed companies to for income, but along with other women in her community has also started growing indigenous varieties of white corn for their own consumption. The women have organized themselves into a group, and started a compact farm growing organic rice. They share seeds, information and frustrations about the treatment they face from the men in their community. The women in this Barangay (district) have a lot in common with their sisters in numerous villages, districts and townships across Asia and the Pacific. This issue of Pesticide Monitor shares insights by women, from various organizations and countries, on the challenges and struggles women continue to face within agriculture.

So what problems do women in South Cotabato, and their sisters in the region, face? Unequal rights between men and women, particularly in terms of work remains a major issue. In waged work for example, women are not paid equal wages for work done, and are easily laid off since they have no rights to protect their positions. Gloria and her friends in the village may have ownership of their land but many women still suffer from landlessness and its implications. The violence women are often subjected to - beatings, rape, death - whether in the home or field have galvanized many into organizing and seeking justice. As Gloria's friend, Brena Brazil, stated, "Men think women are for the bed only, but our women's organization has helped raise women's awareness about their self-worth and rights. It has benefited us all - strengthening our community and its unity." But while these women have taken the initiative to organize themselves and raise the awareness of all within their community, the endemic injustices of sexism, sexual oppression and marginalization prevail. As Gloria and Brena said "Women deserve more respect, we work just as hard or even harder in the fields and at home. We have hearts just like men, we have brains just like men, we should have the right to make decisions on things that effect our lives...Why are we treated with abuse and disrespect?" Why indeed.

The community of Caracolicito, Copey in the Northern region of Cesar in Colombia, recently obtained a favourable sentence against the Federation of Colombian Cottongrowers (Corpocesar) and other environmental authorities, in relation to two pesticides, methyl parathion and toxaphene. The community was represented by public interest group, FUNDEPUBLICO.

Astrid Puentes, FUNDEPUBLICO representative, stated that, "In coordination with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Environment will, in a term of 30 days, determine the necessary steps towards resolving the problem of these toxic chemicals that are currently stored in various parts of Cesar."

"In his sentence, the presiding judge determined that methyl parathion and toxaphene are the substances used to the fumigation of the cotton crops. These chemicals are classified as Category I and II according to WHO standards" reported Puentes. She added that, "the judge acknowledged that these pesticides can enter oganisms through the mouth, skin, and/or respiratory system. And that, because they evaporate very easily, they have to be stored at temperatures less than 30 degrees Celsius"; pointing out that the temperature of Copey lies between 35 and 40 degrees.

FUNDEPUBLICO reported that there were suspicions that "someone was storing 200 tons of chemical waste in five spaces" around Cesar, and "these chemicals had reached their maximum storage limit." The concern was that, "the material was suspected of evaporating and therefore intoxicating all within the zone." According to Puentes, "we knew about two men who were discharging their truck where the wastes were, they are now sick because of the pollution; illnesses with cows began to happen too." In an effort to build a case, FUNDEPUBLICO had communicated with various groups including PAN AP for information on the two pesticides.

This is the first time that a community in Colombia has obtained corrective measures on the misuse of the toxic wastes and deposits, by cotton growers in the country. According to FUNDEPUBLICO, "this sentence constitutes a very important precedent, and is a warning to many companies in the country using toxic substances in their production processes, of the potential effects to both human health and the environment." The judge ordered the District Attorney investigating the case to determine if there were "more offenses", and if "there were more on the 'responsible' authorities" , this may result in "another legal action."

Groups who have been active in the case like FUNDEPUBLICO, and PAN Colombia, consider the judgment a victory, "finally obtaining a good solution for the community that is suffering because this pollution," the information sent in via their requests for help, "was very useful because it let the judge learn more about the situation, in order to issue the decision that he made."

Amid concern in Europe on allowing genetically modified (GM) ingredients in babyfood, an exclusive Food Commission survey was undertaken where many UK babyfood companies stated that they were unable to guarantee that GM ingredients would be excluded from their products. Only three baby food companies, two of them selling organic baby food, said they could do so.

Increasing concern over the widespread use of genetically modified soya and soya ingredients has led to calls for their banning, especially in foods for babies, such as babymilks and weaning foods. Members of the European Parliament, including MEPs from the German Greens want to ban genetically modified food ingredients from babyfoods and concern was expressed by the EU's Scientific Committee on Food several years ago that such novel foods may not be appropriate for babies. However, the EC Novel Foods Regulations, introduced on May 15, provides for the banning of GM ingredients only in very limited circumstances and does not include food for babies and young children.

But, while the issue continues to arouse concern, has it already proved too late? Are the babyfood companies already introducing GM ingredients into their products? The Food Commission asked the major babyfood and babymilk companies whether they were already using GM ingredients and whether they had plans to do so. They found that several manufacturers were relying on old stocks of soya to ensure they remained GM-free for the time being, but could not guarantee to remain GM-free when their stocks ran out. The following is a portion of the responses received from customer advisers and press officers: MILUPA stated that all their soya is conventional soya and that they have good stocks left, but that they cannot guarantee that this will continue as it "depends on what we can get in the future." COW & GATE said that conventional soya is being used in milks and foods, and the company "has no plans to use genetically modified soya in the future" but that the decision "depends on what is available". Cow & Gate's parent company, Dutch based Nutricia, has said it is prepared to support positive "GMO-free" labelling schemes. Heinz said "Although we do not currently use ingredients containing genetically modified material in any Heinz varieties, we would consider their use in the future if the ingredients were considered safe." Safeway said "All Safeway brand baby food utilizes ingredients from conventional sources and contain no soya or soya derivatives." Baby Organix said "Baby Organix does not use soya in its recipes. Baby Organix is a certified organic producer. Organic producers and suppliers are not allowed to use GM materials." Original Fresh Babyfood Company stated they could guarantee all their products were GM ingredient-free and this would continue indefinitely. Hipp said, "As the world's largest processor of organic ingredients we would never consider using GM ingredients. In fact we ceased using soya just in case we could not guarantee it as GM free."

Meanwhile, European regulations are expected to be announced shortly which will exclude from the definition of 'organic' any transgenic animals or plants bred using genetically modified organisms, or any food processed with genetically modified organisms. The move follows a vote in the European Parliament, and has been accepted in principle by Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler.

In June of this year the Federal Court of Australia found that "ICI Australia had been deficient in its duty of care in relation to the registration of the organochlorine pesticide formulation, Chlorfluazuron, sold under the brand name 'Helix' ". The Australian Toxic Network News carried the following editorial by Herbert Beauchamp, which examined the case and the implications of the judgement. According to Beauchamp, "Justice Wilcox found that ICI was aware that Chlorfluazuron (CFZ) bio-accumulated and persisted in the fat of mammals."

"CFZ was aerially sprayed on cotton crops in New South Wales and Queensland during the 1994 growing season, to reduce the incidence of bud worm and boll worm. At the time, cattle fodder was in short supply, and 30,000 tonnes of cotton trash containing residues of CFZ was fed to cattle as a drought supplement" commented Beauchamp.

Explaining the history of the issue, he stated, "In late 1994 the NSW Department of Agriculture issued a health warning detailing residue problems due to feeding cotton leaf pellets to cattle. 'Helix' residues were found in two successive generations of the offspring of contaminated beef and dairy cattle. Calves were unsalable, with CFZ readings as high as 27 parts per million. More than 2,500 cattle operations in NSW alone were quarantined."

"In 1995, cattle farmers filed a class action suit against the Australian government and Crop Care Australasia, ICl's affiliate company responsible for marketing Helix in Australia. ICI is expected to face claims of more than $100 million from cattle farmers who have lost export sales due to Chlorfluazuron (CFZ) contamination" he continues.

Beauchamp also stated that, "Some interesting evidence was revealed in the court case. The court indicated that ICI had failed to undertake the full environmental field studies recommended by specialist scientists in the UK, despite numerous expressions of concern by chemists at ICI UK, to senior officers in Australia. A report by the Australian Meat Research Corporation (AMRC) states that the management of problems was 'severely hampered by the unprecedented paucity of available reliable information on the uptake and depletion characteristics of CFZ in the fat of the cattle'." (1)

"Although the product was subsequently withdrawn from the market, successive generations have been contaminated through suckling. An AMRC update concludes that residue levels fall slowly and over time this process becomes even slower. Most of the fall in CFZ concentration is the result of a dilution effect due to increase of body weight of cattle post-drought. The study concludes that 'some level of residue could be expected to be present for the life of the animal. The half life under these circumstances is infinite'", he continued to explain. (2)

Beauchamp commented that, "The Federal Court judgement against ICI Australia highlights a number of important issues: In 1991, ICI Australia's affiliate, Crop Care Australasia, issued a health hazard information sheet based on research data provided by ICI UK Agrochemicals in March of that year, citing evidence of adverse health effects from repeated or prolonged exposure to CFZ. The information sheet referred to a study in invertebrates which showed that 'repeated exposures to the formulation produced adverse reproductive effects at concentrations greater than 92.9 ng/L'."

The Editorial concluded that, "Australia is the world's largest exporter of beef and veal. Although Australia allows small concentrations of CFZ in meat, our main export market allows zero concentrations. Chronically affected cattle constitute a problem for the producer, for market security - and for the consumer." Also, "The case has important implications for the National Registration Authority (NRA): 'Helix' was given special government approval for use on cotton, despite being provisionally registered due to concerns about its persistence in the environment."

"The registration of an organochlorines for aerial spraying on cotton crops without sufficient data is disturbing. Farmers and environmentalists are inquiring into the process used by the NRA in the registration of this formulation. The upshot of the ICI case is likely to put pressure on the NRA to review its processes for the clearance and registration of agricultural chemicals."

Renewed fears over the safety of plants carrying genes from viruses may lead to curbs on genetically engineered crops in the U.S. Moves to clamp down on altered crops come as the biotechnology giant Monsanto awaits permission to market a potato that carries a viral gene. Meanwhile Canadian research shows that the risk of wild viruses hijacking genes from engineered crops could be far higher than suspected.

At a meeting in Washington DC in early August, the U.S. Department of Agriculture outlined possible restrictions aimed at reducing the risk of creating harmful new plant viruses. Crops are given viral genes to make them resistant to attack by the virus they come from, but the USDA has become increasingly concerned that these genes might be hijacked by other viruses to create new hybrids and new diseases.

The USDA called the meeting to sound out opinion on the need for restrictions. These include a possible limit on the length of genetic sequences introduced into crop plants and the banning of genes that make functional proteins. The department is also worried about particularly high-risk sequences, such as those that trigger the process of viral replication.

Advocates of the technology argue that there is no evidence that recombination - swapping of genetic material between viruses - will produce dangerous hybrid viruses. But critics believe that not enough is yet known to say what the risks of recombination are. And some of those at the meeting suggested that it might be a smoke screen. "Will this be used to make people like me feel that these issues have been addressed?" asked Jane Rissler of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

There is, however, evidence that existing viruses may pick up a trait from a transgenic plant. Some viruses seem to be recent products of recombination that arose naturally. And in laboratory experiments viruses from which a genetic sequence has been removed have reacquired it from transgenic plants carrying the missing genes. Traits such as the ability to move more efficiently from cell to cell or to infect other kinds of plants could prove dangerous if transferred to another virus.

The risks may be much higher than biotechnology companies want to admit. D'Ann Rochon, a plant virologist with Agriculture Canada, described how she infected plant cucumber mosaic virus that lacked the gene to make a protein that allows it to move from cell to cell, and took an equivalent gene from another virus and inserted that into the plants. She found that there were properly functioning mosaic viruses in one in eight of the plants - which must have arisen through recombination. "Within 10 days you get a virus which is very, very fit," says Rochon. This appears to be the first time anyone has shown recombination between two different kinds of viruses within a plant. Around the time of the meeting, Monsanto applied for a permit to market the transgenic potato it calls 'Newleaf', which carries the replicase gene from the potato leaf roll virus. Replicase is responsible for making copies of viral genes.

In the meantime another report, published by the Center for Ethics and Toxics (CET), related that farmers throughout the mid-south regionof the U.S. began experiencing problems with 'Roundup Ready' cotton in August 1997, as cotton bolls began falling off the genetically engineered plants. According to the report, "the failing cotton plants contained an inserted gene that should make the plants able to withstand two seasonal applications of Round up herbicide (Monsanto's brand name for the herbicide glyphosate)." The CET is a California-based, non-profit organization.

Roundup Ready cotton was grown commercially in the U.S. for the first time this year. According to CET, "early this spring, approximately 600,000 acres of the bioengineered crop (created by Monsanto) were sown across the cotton belt. This equals about 2.3 per cent of the 14 million acres of cotton planted nationwide." CET went on to report that, "approximately three quarters of the way through the growing season some cotton bolls became misshapen after the second Roundup application and began to fall off the plants." These failings reportedly occurred in the states of Mississippi, Akansas, Tennessee and Louisiana. The first reports of the crop failure estimated that between 4,000 - 5,000 acres were affected, although according to Robert McCarty (of the Bureau of Plant Industry in Mississippi), there were at least 20,000 affected acres in Mississippi alone. "Some farmers are losing $1 million due to this problem," he said. Researchers at CET stated that, "We tried to speak to Monsanto scientists to ask why crop failures are occurring and were told that the information is not available...We are left with disturbing questions as transgenic crops go into mass production. How much are we willing to jeopardize the evolutionary future of food crops? How much uncertainty is generated by transgenic creation of new plants?"

Sweden is considering banning the use of any chemical that accumulates in the environment, whether or not it is known to be toxic. This hard-line measure has been proposed by a cross-party committee of politicians set up to decide how the country should implement a 1995 decision by North Sea countries to eventually stop all discharges of toxic chemicals that persist in the environment. The committee, which has spent the past year consulting chemicals companies, environmentalists and legal experts, recommends that by the year 2007 all products on the market should be "free from substances that are persistent and liable to bio-accumulate".

This ruling should hopefully include Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). Nearly all of human origin, POPs are created from activities such as the manufacture and use of certain organic chemicals, pulp and paper manufacturing processes utilizing chlorine, the combination of certain fuels and waste, and the production and use of pesticides. The most important class of compounds among POPs are the organochlorines, chemicals containing chlorine. POPs have been shown to cause neurological defects, and serious immune and metabolic effects. Several chemicals, including chlordane, DDT, dioxins, endosulfan, PCPs and toxaphene, have been found to cause immune effects at very low levels.

POPs are also implicated in reproductive anomalies and cancer in both humans and wildlife. There is mounting evidence that organochlorine compounds can act as hormones. These include DDT, DBCP, PCBs and endosulfan, among others. They may be part of the cause for the decrease in the quality of semen, reduction in male fertility (lower sperm count and sperm deformities), increase in testicular and prostate cancer, increase in defects in male sex organs; and increased incidence of breast cancer which has been observed in the last fifty years.

POPs remain in the environment for long periods, biomagnify (increasing in concentration as they rise in the food chain),and spread thousands of miles from the point of release. POPs att ach to soil particles, moving through air and water. The highest concentrations have been found in birds, fish, seals, whales, and among some of the native peoples in the Arctic.

Nations in the North and South are starting to work together on several fronts to develop legally binding agreements to restrict and, in some cases, to ban the use of 12 POPs: including seven of PAN's Dirty Dozen pesticides. Much of the discussion to date has focused on DDT, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, chlordane, heptachlor, mirex, hexachloro-benzene (HCB), toxaphene, dioxins, furans and PCBs. There is a real need to keep the momentum going. Action at the international level can be slow. It is therefore necessary to push for action at the regional, national and local levels to stop the use of persistent and hazardous pesticides. Briefing of national delegations at the UN Environmental Programme and World Health Assembly (WHA) on POPs needs to be done so that they take a firm stand on controlling POPs at the international level. Increasing evidence shows that POPs are a global problem, and while positive moves by countries like Sweden are welcome, there is a need for more national and even regional actions to eliminate these chemicals.

Meanwhile, the Swedish Committee also recommends that by 2002, manufacturers should be forced to label products with detailed information about the chemicals they contain. Products should also be free from anything known to have "serious or irreversible effects" on human health or the environment. The government plans to include the proposals in a bill that it will submit to parliament later this year. As well as hundreds of pesticides and commonly used industrial chemicals, the ban would cover PVC because according to Annika Helker-Lundstrom of the Swedish Environment Ministry, "we don't know what tonnes of PVC polymer will degrade to in a few centuries".

The chemicals industry is fiercely opposed to the proposal. The Federation of Swedish Industries says the measures would harm Swedish manufacturers while doing little to improve the global environment. The committee defends its precautionary approach, claiming it is unlikely that all chemicals will ever be tested sufficiently. It wants its proposal adopted by the whole European Union.

Production of organic tea in Darjeeling is increasing as consumers in the West refuse to import tea with pesticides residues. A large number of tea gardens have switched over to organic tea production with no inorganic fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides used. Similarly, only neem-based pesticides and weedicides are used. However, the organic tea grown is meant only for export.

More than 80 per cent of Darjeeling tea is exported, with Germany, Japan, and Britain being the main buyers. The remaining 20 per cent of Darjeeling tea is consumed in the domestic market. In the recent past, some consignments of Darjeeling Tea have been rejected by the Germans because the maximum residue limit (MRL) of certain chemicals were beyond prescribed limits.

Demanding a higher price, wheat farmers in India's food bowl state of Punjab have refused to sell to government agencies, weakening the nation's defenses against hunger and threatening its food security. Punjab's farms were the centre of the Green Revolution and meant to supply more than two thirds of the 10 million tonnes of wheat the government was to buy from the country's seven main cereal producing states. Punjab's 3.2 million hectares of farms are estimated to have grown about 12 million tonnes of wheat this season.

However, the state's farmers have refused to sell, saying they are not satisfied with the price the government will pay. The government raised the floor price for wheat this year to 13.5 dollars for 100 kgs, but the farmers want it to be hiked by a further five dollars. They say they should get the same price at which the government imports wheat, to make up for the local production shortfall. "If the government can import wheat at Rupees 650 (about 18.5 dollars) a quintal (100 kg), why not pay the (same to the) domestic farmer," the leader of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Indian Farmers Union) spearheading the boycott, asked the daily, The Times of India. In recent years, declining yields have forced India to import wheat. Two million tonnes were bought overseas last year and an equal amount is due to be shipped in from Australia and Canada this year.

"Indian farmers are not subsidized. On the contrary they are subject to many (production and marketing) controls," says leading Indian farm researcher, Devinder Sharma. "In fact, all other sectors of the Indian economy have prospered at the cost of the farming community. Why should the farmers toil hard to ensure food security for a nation which cares little for the village economy and the farming community in particular," he says. Sharma refers to a global GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) study of the extent to which domestic producers were subsidized by governments. While Indian farmers were found to be receiving a negative subsidy of 2.33%, Japanese tillers were found to be subsidized by 70%.

However, better prices for farmers alone are not enough to enable India's farms to feed the growing population because crop production is slowing down. Official statistics show that yields in Punjab's farms are growing half as slowly as at the peak of the Green Revolution in the mid-1970's. Critics say the heavy use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation has damaged soils. Moreover, new plant diseases are ravaging large farm areas every year.

Meanwhile, a local village community in a remote part of the South-Western State of Kerala has used its authority for autonomy, provided by the Indian constitution and supporting laws, to establish its own sui generis system and assert the collective rights to biodiversity of the community. Recent amendments to the Indian Constitution, and laws enacted under it, vest panchayat raj - or self-government and control over local resources and other affairs - in villages and taluks (a fourth level of local administrative unit in the Indian Union), and in tribal communities in 'scheduled areas' (tribal areas listed and specified in a schedule of the Indian Constitution).

Using this space for local self-government, the panchayat of Pattuvam taluk in the Kerala State, in South-west India, has issued a charter on biodiversity, and issued a declaration, to assert local biodiversity as a community resource to be collectively protected, and which the community has announced it will not allow to be privatized through patents on derived products or varieties.

The legal implications and effects of this assertion vis-à-vis the powers and responsibilities of the Government of India (at the apex level of the Union), and India's membership of the World Trade Organization and its TRIPs agreement may not be clear for some time. India has a rich heritage of biodiversity, and methods to use of these herbs to treat various diseases and ailments are spelt out in old traditional medicine texts as those on Ayurveda and the relatively later system of Unani medicine (which was prevalent during the muslim rule in Delhi and North India). It has also been documented in some of the Indian pharmacopoeia.

Activists charge that taking advantage of the TRIPs and legal interpretations in US, Japan and Europe - allowing private appropriation of publicly available knowledge through some small cosmetic changes - pharmaceutical transnational companies from the North, have been "pirating" all this knowledge and claiming patents on them. Indian Herbal and plant material and soil organisms are the sources of several of these patent claims. All this has created great concern in India, and has impelled non-governmental activists to persuade local communities and tribals to assert their constitutional rights and make indigenous knowledge an inalienable community right and block patents and other IPRs to the products, processes and derivatives. There are similar NGO movements around the globe that are gearing up to challenge these monopolistic rights, and build up opposition to the WTO and its TRIPs regime.

In July 1997, the Utusan Konsumer, Malaysia, carried a report by Rachel's' Environmental and Health Weekly that stating that, "Science magazine published a new study showing that some combinations of hormone-disrupting chemicals are much more powerful than any of the individual chemicals by themselves." "Science magazine", it explained, "is the conservative voice of mainstream science in the U.S., and had largely ignored the possibility that industrial chemicals may be interfering with hormones in wildlife and humans. "

The new study showed that "combinations of two or more common pesticides, at low levels that might be found in the environment, are up to 1,600 times as powerful as any of the individual pesticides by themselves." The study showed that one chemical, chlordane, which has no ability to disrupt hormones by itself, nevertheless greatly magnifies the ability of other chemicals to disrupt hormones.

The article explained that, "Hormones are natural chemicals that act as messengers, traveling through the blood stream, regulating various bodily processes, coordinating the body's activities to maintain health. Hormones are particularly important during growth and development of an egg, an embryo, a fetus, and a baby. About 100 different hormones have now been identified, and they control growth, development and behaviour in all vertebrates (fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals), including humans."

It stated that, "Since 1991, studies have shown that at least 50 synthetic (human-created) industrial chemicals can interfere with hormones and disrupt normal growth and development in birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and humans. The results of such interference can include changes in sexual preference and behaviour, small penises; diminished sperm count; various cancers; nervous system disorders; birth defects, and damage to the immune system, among other effects. Many of the 50 hormone disrupting chemicals are commonly found in detergents, plastics, and pesticides. In response to these studies, the chemicals industry has asserted that low level environmental exposures are not powerful enough to affect humans". According to Rachel's' Weekly, "The new study published in June 1996 in Science showed that the chemical industry's position is not likely to hold up under scrutiny."

The article stated that, "If these findings are confirmed by follow-up studies, it could profoundly affect the way chemicals are viewed, tested for toxicity, and regulated because combinations of chemicals will have to be considered. The environmental protection apparatus of the U.S., and indeed the world, is based on studies of individual chemicals acting alone." The article went on to state that, "A thorough battery of tests has not yet been devised, and there are now 70,000 chemicals currently in commercial use, with about 1,000 new ones added each year. The prospect of testing the toxicity of this number of chemicals, even one at a time, is daunting. The new study in Science makes the enormous problem of individually testing 70,000 chemicals seem small by comparison. If scientists have to study combinations of chemicals, their jobs are vastly increased." Nevertheless, it stressed that "the idea that common industrial chemicals may be interfering with the hormones of wildlife and humans, has far-reaching implications. If it is true, it means that chemical industry as we know it is a threat to all life on earth".

Meanwhile, a unique long-term study may add to the concern over impacts of chemicals on hormones. The study suggests that, "girls exposed in the womb to high levels of chemicals that mimic the sex hormone oestrogen go through puberty early." Walter Rogan, acting clinical director at the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, has been monitoring children whose mothers were exposed during pregnancy to PCBs and DDE, a breakdown product of the pesticide DDT.

At a conference on environmental oestrogens in Arlington, Virginia, in mid July 1997, Rogan presented preliminary data showing that, "the daughters of women with the highest exposures to these chemicals are reaching sexual maturity earlier. Chemicals that mimic oestrogen occur in everything from pesticides to plastics, and scientists are concerned that these "endocrine disrupters" could cause breast cancer and declining sperm counts. There are also suggestions that the chemicals interfere with fetal development."

Between 1978 and 1982, Rogan and his colleagues tested hundreds of pregnant women living in North Carolina by measuring levels of DDE and PCBs in their blood and breast milk. They also tested for these chemicals in fetal blood collected from umbilical cords after birth. The team monitored 600 of the women's children as they grew older, sending them regular questionnaires that included line drawings of different stages of breast, genital and pubic hair development, so that the children could record which drawing most resembled their own bodies. They found that girls with the highest prenatal exposure to the chemicals entered puberty some eleven months earlier than girls with lower exposures. For boys, the onset of puberty was not affected by exposure in the womb to the chemicals.

Few studies have followed children long enough to show how prenatal exposure to these chemicals affects them as they reach puberty. Shanna Swan, an expert on the reproductive effects of chemicals that mimic oestrogen at the California Department of Health Services in Sacramento, says the new findings are "very important and extremely interesting". The results raise health concerns, she says, because other studies have shown that girls who enter puberty early are more likely to develop breast cancer in later life.