What are the Next Steps to Mitigate the Threat Posed by Environmental Estrogens? A Workshop Designed to Focus the Field And Provide a Research 2010 Decade, May 2010, Milwaukee WI

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Principal Investigator: Paige NovakProposal No: CBET-1039402Given the high potency of some estrogenic chemicals at extremely low levels (1 ng/L), environmental estrogens (EEs) are potentially the most dangerous pollutants that humans produce. EEs include natural and synthetic hormones, PPCPs, plant-based phytoestrogens, and a range of industrial products and byproducts. It is known that they cause reproductive and behavioral problems in fish at environmentally-relevant concentrations. It is also now known that there are sources of these compounds to our surface water that had previously been ignored. Questions remain as to what the most relevant sources of EEs are, where their greatest threat lies (both to ecosystems and to human health), what their fate is in various environments, and what needs to be done to stop the use and/or discharge of these potent pollutants into the environment before an environmental disaster occurs. Unlike many other environmental challenges that we have faced (DDT) or do face (global climate change), this is one that we have the potential to solve before much damage is done. To do so, we must act quickly and focus the talent and creativity of the relevant scientists and engineers in the field on a set of cohesive research questions. The PIs plan to organize a workshop that will span two and a half days, the outcome of which will be a paper that will be submitted to a high-profile journal such as Science. This paper will lay out what the participants feel are the most urgent questions in this field and will act as a means to focus and engage the wider scientific community in the hope that we can better address and work to solve the environmental estrogen problem before it has significant and widespread effects on ecosystems or human health. There is a ?critical mass? of researchers spanning the topics of estrogen sources, their environmental fate, and the ecological and human health effects of these compounds. Unfortunately, these researchers are not working in concert and those working in certain areas (fate) do not necessarily communicate with those working in other areas (human health impacts). The field lacks leadership and is not focused on a common and clear set of questions that will allow it to truly solve this problem. This workshop will focus those working in the field of environmental estrogens on a cohesive research agenda. This will enable them to find a true solution to the problem of estrogen pollution. The outcome of this workshop will be a very public document, but more focused and higher quality research should also result. This will result in drinking water and surface water that better safeguards human and ecological health.