PLASTICS AND THYROID FUNCTION

Exposure To BPA, Phthalates May Affect Thyroid Function.
HealthDay (7/14, Dallas) reported, "Chemicals called phthalates and bisphenol-A (BPA) that are found in solvents, plastics and numerous household products may alter levels of thyroid hormones in the body," according to a study published online July 11 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. After comparing "thyroid levels and traces of phthalates and BPA in urine samples of 1,346 adults and 329 teenagers," researchers found that "the greater the exposure to phthalates and BPA, the lower the thyroid hormone levels."

This is dated July 14, 2011.

Here in our Endocrine Clinic, in this isolated village of Indians, we have been worried about it since 2004 and in all the conferences I have given since then I have included the effects of Chemicals on Thyroid Function, Precocious Puberty and even Type 2 Diabetes.

MAN ON THE MOON, HIGH TSH ON THE GROUND

In a matter of months, three women colleagues at a small clinic were diagnosed as Hypothyroid and sought my advice about the dosage they were being given by their doctor. They were only on small dosages of the thyroid hormone as replacement, 50 micrograms.
This made me think of two things. First of all, three women in a small clinic are more than coincidental, plus all three are living in areas that were farmland before and now form housing estates or new houses.
Secondly, the normal dosage for replacement is nowhere as low as 50 micrograms and that dosage I would reserve for someone who has got concomitant heart disease.
The true teacher was the young woman, in her late twenties, mother of two young children and a health care worker. She had moved into a new house with her husband and children and had begun noticing a change in the behaviour of her older child, a boy. He had become increasingly withdrawn and lethargic. She was very concerned but luckily she did not consult a psychologist or even her family physician for fear of her son being mislabeled with something or other. She began a little bit of detective work, Sherlock Holmes type, the kind we were taught as medical students in London. Environmental contamination seemed a good enough suspect, her house being on a land that was until recently a farmland. She decided to check on the water she was using, from the water supply, and to her consternation she found out that the water supply was from an independent well! She immediately stopped the use of her tap water for drinking purposes and she substituted bottle water instead. In the ensuing months, her son recovered his previous energy and within six months he was back to his old self. Feeling fatigued and with less energy, she consulted her general PR actioner, who diagnosed Hypothyroidism in her, and started her on 50 micrograms of synthroid on which she felt much better.
When she consulted me on this, I felt that she was giving me the answers already; whatever contaminated her young son’s body had contaminated her as well. Water from the well contained something that blocked the functioning of her thyroid gland, and being an Endocrinologist, perchlorate came to mind. But at this time, the year would have been 2004 or 5, there was no mention of perchlorate in the environment in the “medical” literature, even though retrospectively there were lots of information on the web about perchlorate seeping into the water supply of the USA.

As an Endocrinologist, one cannot blindly accept the fact that the thyroid dysfunction has blossomed in the USA. And five years later the learned societies are beginning to accept it.

It is best to keep your home as free of Plastics as possible, plastics of all forms.

The idea to look into Plastics as a source of Endocrine dysfunction was stimulated by a small booklet I bought in Johor Bahru in 2004 by a diligent outfit from Penang Called Consumer Association of Penang. The booklet was titled: The Toxicity of Plastics
They were much ahead of the times!