'Zombie' Hormone Disruptors Rise From the Dead

ananyo writes "Hormone-disrupting chemicals may be far more prevalent in lakes and rivers than previously thought. Environmental scientists have discovered that although these compounds are often broken down by sunlight, they can regenerate at night, returning to life like zombies (abstract). Endocrine disruptors — pollutants that unbalance hormone systems — are known to harm fish, and there is growing evidence linking them to health problems in humans, including infertility and various cancers 'Risk assessments have been built on the basis that light exposure is enough to break down these products,' adds Laura Vandenberg, an endocrinologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst who was not involved in the study. 'This work undermines that idea completely.'"

Comments

Interesting...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I assume that there simply weren't as many endocrine disruptors in the wild, so it was less of an issue over evolutionary time; but for (modestly complex) chemicals to be photosensitive enough to degrade; but suitably structurally favored to have more than a remote probability of being created by the recombination of their breakdown products is rather interesting...

Would it be in any way adaptive for hormones themselves(which disruptors are often very similar to, hence the ability to neatly disrupt the endocrine system) to have this level of durability, or is it much more likely that it's mere chance, biologically irrelevant until we started pumping the things out on an industrial scale?

Makes you wonder

[drinkypoo]

Kind of makes you wonder if the breakdown products from this stuff can get into your body separately, and then combine there. Well, it makes me wonder. Maybe that's because I'm not a biologist, or maybe it's because I'm a pessimist.