Jim Pirkle, deputy director for science at the CDC's Environmental Health Laboratory, says that while more research must be done to replicate Swan's findings, "The big concern of the phthalates is that they have antiandrogen activity. They get rid of things that are in the testosterone line, the things that make a man a man."

In a separate study, Harvard and CDC researchers found that boys in neonatal intensive care units had phthalate levels about 25 times higher than the general population.

This is two years after the Food and Drug Administration warned hospitals that phthalate leaching out of plastic used in medical devices carriers such a health risk to baby boys that those devices shouldn't be used on babies or on pregnant women carrying male fetuses.

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is a building block of chemicals used to make stin, grease and water-resistant coatings such as Teflon and Gore-Tex.

An Environmental Protection Agency scientific advisory panel recently concluded PFOA is a likely carcinogen with liver, breast, pancreatic and testicular cancer of specific concern. The EPA has not yet adopted the finding and has not set acceptable limits.

A study released last month by the US Geological survey and the City of Austin found that runoff from parking lot sealant, is a source of poycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons known to be a likely carcinogen and a possible reproductive toxicant.

Not Just Generation
Research published by Michael Skinner, director of the Centre for Reproductive Biology at Washington State University, showed that exposure of rodents to an insecticide called methoxychlor and a fungicide called vinclozolin, both endocrine disruptors, caused changes in mice that affected not just the offspring exposed to the chemical in utero but all males born for at least four subsequent generations.

"If an environmental toxin can cause a transgeneratonnal effect and affect your grandchild, this is much more major hazard we need to consider in environmental toxins," Skinner says.