Surprising Number of Unregulated Chemicals Found in Food

Thursday, April 10, 2014 by Civil Eats
GRAS Out
by Twilight Greenaway

If you don’t recognize all the high-tech ingredients available in food and drinks these days, you’re not alone. Some of these new additions—such as glucosamine hydrochloride, gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA), or soy isoflavone extract—might show up in product marketing, while others, such as milk protein concentrate, will not. But whether new food additives are being promoted or not, a report released this week by the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) says their novelty isn’t the only reason we should be paying attention.

In fact, a fairly large loophole allows chemicals and other new food and drink additives to bypass review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because of a law passed in 1958. The law, which was intended to apply to common food ingredients like vinegar and vegetable oil—items that everyone could agree were safe to eat—allowed companies to deem ingredients in their products GRAS, or “generally recognized as safe.” Since then, the GRAS designation has continued to allow food companies to add ingredients to products without the need for FDA approval.

NRDC and others take issue with who is doing the “recognizing.” You see, while chemical companies have the option to offer up new additives for review by the FDA, they can also just call them GRAS and quietly start using them. And while the latter is considered the responsible thing to do, it’s increasingly less common.

NRDC looked closely at a list of companies, most of which have names like NutraGenesis, Biocell Technology, and NuLive Science and make additives that appear in things like energy drinks and sports bars—the relatively new gray area where supplements and food overlap. They found 275 chemicals from 56 companies, which, “appear to be marketed for use in food based on undisclosed GRAS safety determinations.”

“We took ingredients lists and matched them against FDA databases of regulated additives and we found a large number of additives on those ingredients lists that didn’t appear anywhere,” NRDC Senior Scientist and co-author of the report, Maricel Maffini, told Civil Eats. By process of illumination, she and her team were able to identify a list of so-called “self-determined GRAS ingredients.”

However, Maffini added, “We’re a research team, consumers don’t have the time or resources to do that.” In total, NRDC estimates that about 1,000 of the 10,000 additives used in food today have been added more or less on the down low by companies that don’t want to go through an official review process, don’t want their process known by competitors, or don’t want to face safety questions directly.

Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Maffini and her co-authors got ahold of correspondence between a number of chemical companies and FDA staff members involved in review processes that resulted in withdrawals by the companies. If the FDA rejects a GRAS notice, it informs the company of its safety concerns and makes those concerns public. But if a company withdraws its request for review, the public is left in the dark.

In one example, Maffini and her team looked into a chemical called EGCG, made from an extract of green tea. “We found out the GRAS notice had been submitted to [the FDA] and withdrawn several times. However, it’s really popular in sports drinks, energy drinks, etc.,” she said.

“While the company was basically explaining that these types of purified chemicals were ‘just like green tea,’ FDA had concerns about EGCG,” Maffini said. In letters to the company, the agency pointed to studies that raised health questions, such as an association with fetal leukemia, and one paper that cited evidence that the chemical caused genetic damage in human cells.

And this is just one example. As the report reads, “companies found their chemicals safe for use in food despite potentially serious allergic reactions, interactions with common drugs, or proposed uses much greater than company-established safe doses.

Of course, NRDC isn’t suggesting that everything added to food under the GRAS rule is unsafe. The point is merely that, under the current system, there is no way for most consumers to know either way. And while many additives appear on ingredient lists, Maffini points out that when additives are used in “incidental” quantities, or included in categories like “natural flavors,” food companies have no obligation to disclose them.

NRDC has made a list of recommendations in the report, including that Congress require the FDA to be informed of GRAS determinations so it can confirm that each chemical’s use in food is, in fact, safe. The organization also wants to see the correspondence between FDA and the companies filing for GRAS review made public, even if they have been withdrawn. In other words, the group is pushing for a more transparent system all around. Until then, NRDC suggests that perhaps GRAS should stand for “generally recognized as secret.”

We're Each Carrying Our Own Internal Toxins

Friday, March 16, 2012 by Maine Morning Sentinel
by Denis Thoet




Dinosaurs: small brains, big bodies. Extinct.

Humans: Large brains, small bodies. Not extinct. Not yet, anyway.

Our large brains, however, have created a world bathed in chemicals, engineered foods, plastic environments with poisons that surround us and invade all parts of the natural world -- and our own bodies.

We are bringing in those poisons through our mouths (food and contaminated liquids), our noses ("fragrances" and polluted air) and our skin (cosmetics, scented shampoos and moisturizers).

It took a meteor strike 65 million years ago to wipe out the dinosaurs, after they had a pretty successful run for about 250 million years. Humans, on the other hand, have been around for only 4 million to 5 million years, and our meager evolutionary run is now meeting a big obstacle: We are not able to metabolize the last 100-plus years of petroleum-based chemical pollution of the earth and of ourselves:

• Nitrates, chemical fertilizers and herbicides used in industrial farming overflow into our waterways and oceans.
• Oil-based chemicals saturate our food, the containers that hold that food, our furniture and carpeting, our cleaning agents, our "lawn care" products, our kids' toys, our cooking utensils and pans.
• Manufacturing, particularly paper making, pours millions of toxics into the air and water yearly.
• Unused medicines get dumped into our waterways and reappear in our drinking water.

Dinosaurs didn't have the luxury of observing their demise. We do.

We are participating in it with every purchase of plastic-coated junk, every bite of industrially produced "food," every application of lawn products that poison the ground, the insects and the birds that feed on the insects -- and ourselves. No one is forcing us to buy this stuff.

I'm not overstating our situation. Read What's Gotten into Us? Staying Healthy in a Toxic World, by McKay Jenkins (2011). Shortly into the book, Jenkins writes about a 2006 study of 13 Maine people and the toxins in their bodies.

The study tested for a handful of toxic chemicals: phthalates (softening plasticizers added to baby toys, shower curtains, drinking water bottles); flame retardants (applied to electronic devices, furniture, draperies, carpeting); perfluorinated chemicals (called Teflon, and used to coat cookware and in food packaging for things such as microwave popcorn), and bisphenol A (a hardening plastic additive in baby bottles and the lining of canned food). It also tested for dangerous metals such as lead, mercury and arsenic.

All of the participants had lived in relatively rural environments all their lives. Some were high profile, such as Russell Libby, executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA), former state Sen. Dana Dow, and Hannah Pingree, then-majority leader of the Maine House of Representatives.

Surprisingly, Libby was at the top of the list. Of the 71 chemicals tested for, he had 41 in his body. Despite his rural and organic lifestyle, he had the highest number of flame retardants.

Dana Dow, a furniture dealer who applied flame retardants to the furniture he sold, had the highest levels of perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) and Teflon compounds. And Pingree, of North Haven Island, had high levels of mercury in her body.

Another surprise was the results of tests on a mother and daughter, Violet and Laura Lee Raymond. Laura Lee, then 28, was confident she would have a much lower rate of toxins than her mother. She was raised in Fort Kent -- about as rural as you can get in Maine.

"Laura Lee Raymond had higher levels of toxins than her 51-year-old mother," Jenkins wrote. "She had high levels of mercury and arsenic." Arsenic does occur naturally in parts of the groundwater in Maine, and Raymond thought possibly the mercury in her body came from her liking for sushi.

She is both puzzled, and angry, about the results, however, since she has always followed a healthy lifestyle.

"You kind of go through these phases. You're in denial, then you get freaked out. Then you go through a hypervigilant phase," Raymond said. "I got rid of my microwave, got rid of my nonstick pans. I was really hypersensitive about what was going into my body." And she was surprised by people's reactions.

"People come up to me and say, 'Oh my God! I read about you! You're toxic!'"

Her reaction: "If I'm toxic, you're toxic, too!"

That's the key to all of this. We are all toxic, regardless of whether we get tested.

Since I was born in 1944, I could probably add toxins such as Strontium-90 from the above-ground nuclear testing that went on until 1962, or the pesticide DDT, which didn't get banned until the '70s.

And these toxins that we all have are not going away. Not until we stop producing them, and even then we're stuck with what we've got.

Illegal to know what's in your food?

America: The Grim Truth

Americans, I have some bad news for you:
By Lance Freeman

Americans, I have some bad news for you:

You have the worst quality of life in the developed world – by a wide margin.

If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.

I know this because I am an American, and I escaped from the prison you call home.

I have lived all around the world, in wealthy countries and poor ones, and there is only one country I would never consider living in again: The United States of America. The mere thought of it fills me with dread.

Consider this: you are the only people in the developed world without a single-payer health system. Everyone in Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand has a single-payer system. If they get sick, they can devote all their energies to getting well. If you get sick, you have to battle two things at once: your illness and the fear of financial ruin. Millions of Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills, and tens of thousands die each year because they have no insurance or insufficient insurance. And don’t believe for a second that rot about America having the world’s best medical care or the shortest waiting lists: I’ve been to hospitals in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Singapore, and Thailand, and every one was better than the “good” hospital I used to go to back home. The waits were shorter, the facilities more comfortable, and the doctors just as good.

This is ironic, because you need a good health system more than anyone else in the world. Why? Because your lifestyle is almost designed to make you sick.

Let’s start with your diet: Much of the beef you eat has been exposed to fecal matter in processing. Your chicken is contaminated with salmonella. Your stock animals and poultry are pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics. In most other countries, the government would act to protect consumers from this sort of thing; in the United States, the government is bought off by industry to prevent any effective regulations or inspections. In a few years, the majority of all the produce for sale in the United States will be from genetically modified crops, thanks to the cozy relationship between Monsanto Corporation and the United States government. Worse still, due to the vast quantities of high-fructose corn syrup Americans consume, fully one-third of children born in the United States today will be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes at some point in their lives.

Of course, it’s not just the food that’s killing you, it’s the drugs. If you show any sign of life when you’re young, they’ll put you on Ritalin. Then, when you get old enough to take a good look around, you’ll get depressed, so they’ll give you Prozac. If you’re a man, this will render you chemically impotent, so you’ll need Viagra to get it up. Meanwhile, your steady diet of trans-fat-laden food is guaranteed to give you high cholesterol, so you’ll get a prescription for Lipitor. Finally, at the end of the day, you’ll lay awake at night worrying about losing your health plan, so you’ll need Lunesta to go to sleep.

With a diet guaranteed to make you sick and a health system designed to make sure you stay that way, what you really need is a long vacation somewhere. Unfortunately, you probably can’t take one. I’ll let you in on little secret: if you go to the beaches of Thailand, the mountains of Nepal, or the coral reefs of Australia, you’ll probably be the only American in sight. And you’ll be surrounded crowds of happy Germans, French, Italians, Israelis, Scandinavians and wealthy Asians. Why? Because they’re paid well enough to afford to visit these places AND they can take vacations long enough to do so. Even if you could scrape together enough money to go to one of these incredible places, by the time you recovered from your jetlag, it would time to get on a plane and rush back to your job.

If you think I’m making this up, check the stats on average annual vacation days by country:

Finland: 44
Italy: 42
France: 39
Germany: 35
UK: 25
Japan: 18
USA: 12

The fact is, they work you like dogs in the United States. This should come as no surprise: the United States never got away from the plantation/sweat shop labor model and any real labor movement was brutally suppressed. Unless you happen to be a member of the ownership class, your options are pretty much limited to barely surviving on service-sector wages or playing musical chairs for a spot in a cubicle (a spot that will be outsourced to India next week anyway). The very best you can hope for is to get a professional degree and then milk the system for a slice of the middle-class pie. And even those who claw their way into the middle class are but one illness or job loss away from poverty. Your jobs aren’t secure. Your company has no loyalty to you. They’ll play you off against your coworkers for as long as it suits them, then they’ll get rid of you.

Of course, you don’t have any choice in the matter: the system is designed this way. In most countries in the developed world, higher education is either free or heavily subsidized; in the United States, a university degree can set you back over US$100,000. Thus, you enter the working world with a crushing debt. Forget about taking a year off to travel the world and find yourself – you’ve got to start working or watch your credit rating plummet.

If you’re “lucky,” you might even land a job good enough to qualify you for a home loan. And then you’ll spend half your working life just paying the interest on the loan – welcome to the world of American debt slavery. America has the illusion of great wealth because there’s a lot of “stuff” around, but who really owns it? In real terms, the average American is poorer than the poorest ghetto dweller in Manila, because at least they have no debts. If they want to pack up and leave, they can; if you want to leave, you can’t, because you’ve got debts to pay.

All this begs the question: Why would anyone put up with this? Ask any American and you’ll get the same answer: because America is the freest country on earth. If you believe this, I’ve got some more bad news for you: America is actually among the least free countries on earth. Your piss is tested, your emails and phone calls are monitored, your medical records are gathered, and you are never more than one stray comment away from writhing on the ground with two Taser prongs in your ass.

And that’s just physical freedom. Mentally, you are truly imprisoned. You don’t even know the degree to which you are tormented by fears of medical bankruptcy, job loss, homelessness and violent crime because you’ve never lived in a country where there is no need to worry about such things.

But it goes much deeper than mere surveillance and anxiety. The fact is, you are not free because your country has been taken over and occupied by another government. Fully 70% of your tax dollars go to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon is the real government of the United States. You are required under pain of death to pay taxes to this occupying government. If you’re from the less fortunate classes, you are also required to serve and die in their endless wars, or send your sons and daughters to do so. You have no choice in the matter: there is a socio-economic draft system in the United States that provides a steady stream of cannon fodder for the military.

If you call a life of surveillance, anxiety and ceaseless toil in the service of a government you didn’t elect “freedom,” then you and I have a very different idea of what that word means.

If there was some chance that the country could be changed, there might be reason for hope. But can you honestly look around and conclude that anything is going to change? Where would the change come from? The people? Take a good look at your compatriots: the working class in the United States has been brutally propagandized by jackals like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Members of the working class have been taught to lick the boots of their masters and then bend over for another kick in the ass. They’ve got these people so well trained that they’ll take up arms against the other half of the working class as soon as their masters give the word.

If the people cannot make a change, how about the media? Not a chance. From Fox News to the New York Times, the mass media in the United States is nothing but the public relations wing of the corporatocracy, primarily the military industrial complex. At least the citizens of the former Soviet Union knew that their news was bullshit. In America, you grow up thinking you’ve got a free media, which makes the propaganda doubly effective. If you don’t think American media is mere corporate propaganda, ask yourself the following question: have you ever heard a major American news outlet suggest that the country could fund a single-payer health system by cutting military spending?

If change can’t come from the people or the media, the only other potential source of change would be the politicians. Unfortunately, the American political process is among the most corrupt in the world. In every country on earth, one expects politicians to take bribes from the rich. But this generally happens in secret, behind the closed doors of their elite clubs. In the United States, this sort of political corruption is done in broad daylight, as part of legal, accepted, standard operating procedure. In the United States, they merely call these bribes campaign donations, political action committees and lobbyists. One can no more expect the politicians to change this system than one can expect a man to take an axe and chop his own legs out from underneath him.

No, the United States of America is not going to change for the better. The only change will be for the worse. And when I say worse, I mean much worse. As we speak, the economic system that sustained the country during the post-war years is collapsing. The United States maxed out its “credit card” sometime in 2008 and now its lenders, starting with China, are in the process of laying the foundations for a new monetary system to replace the Anglo-American “petro-dollar” system. As soon as there is a viable alternative to the US dollar, the greenback will sink like a stone.

While the United States was running up crushing levels of debt, it was also busy shipping its manufacturing jobs and white-collar jobs overseas, and letting its infrastructure fall to pieces. Meanwhile, Asian and European countries were investing in education, infrastructure and raw materials. Even if the United States tried to rebuild a real economy (as opposed to a service/financial economy) do think American workers would ever be able to compete with the workers of China or Europe? Have you ever seen a Japanese or German factory? Have you ever met a Singaporean or Chinese worker?

There are only two possible futures facing the United States, and neither one is pretty. The best case is a slow but orderly decline – essentially a continuation of what’s been happening for the last two decades. Wages will drop, unemployment will rise, Medicare and Social Security benefits will be slashed, the currency will decline in value, and the disparity of wealth will spiral out of control until the United States starts to resemble Mexico or the Philippines – tiny islands of wealth surrounded by great poverty (the country is already halfway there).

Equally likely is a sudden collapse, perhaps brought about by a rapid flight from the US dollar by creditor nations like China, Japan, Korea and the OPEC nations. A related possibility would be a default by the United States government on its vast debt. One look at the financial balance sheet of the US government should convince you how likely this is: governmental spending is skyrocketing and tax receipts are plummeting – something has to give. If either of these scenarios plays out, the resulting depression will make the present recession look like a walk in the park.

Whether the collapse is gradual or gut-wrenchingly sudden, the results will be chaos, civil strife and fascism. Let’s face it: the United States is like the former Yugoslavia – a collection of mutually antagonistic cultures united in name only. You’ve got your own version of the Taliban: right-wing Christian fundamentalists who actively loathe the idea of secular Constitutional government. You’ve got a vast intellectual underclass that has spent the last few decades soaking up Fox News and talk radio propaganda, eager to blame the collapse on Democrats, gays and immigrants. You’ve got a ruthless ownership class that will use all the means at its disposal to protect its wealth from the starving masses.

On top of all that you’ve got vast factory farms, sprawling suburbs and a truck-based shipping system, all of it entirely dependent on oil that is about to become completely unaffordable. And you’ve got guns. Lots of guns. In short: the United States is about to become a very unwholesome place to be.

Right now, the government is building fences and walls along its northern and southern borders. Right now, the government is working on a national ID system (soon to be fitted with biometric features). Right now, the government is building a surveillance state so extensive that they will be able to follow your every move, online, in the street and across borders. If you think this is just to protect you from “terrorists,” then you’re sadly mistaken. Once the shit really hits the fan, do you really think you’ll just be able to jump into the old station wagon, drive across the Canadian border and spend the rest of your days fishing and drinking Molson? No, the government is going to lock the place down. They don’t want their tax base escaping. They don’t want their “recruits” escaping. They don’t want YOU escaping.

I am not writing this to scare you. I write this to you as a friend. If you are able to read and understand what I’ve written here, then you are a member of a small minority in the United States. You are a minority in a country that has no place for you.

So what should you do?

You should leave the United States of America.

If you’re young, you’ve got plenty of choices: you can teach English in the Middle East, Asia or Europe. Or you can go to university or graduate school abroad and start building skills that will qualify you for a work visa. If you’ve already got some real work skills, you can apply to emigrate to any number of countries as a skilled immigrant. If you are older and you’ve got some savings, you can retire to a place like Costa Rica or the Philippines. If you can’t qualify for a work, student or retirement visa, don’t let that stop you – travel on a tourist visa to a country that appeals to you and talk to the expats you meet there. Whatever you do, go speak to an immigration lawyer as soon as you can. Find out exactly how to get on a path that will lead to permanent residence and eventually citizenship in the country of your choice.

You will not be alone. There are millions of Americans just like me living outside the United States. Living lives much more fulfilling, peaceful, free and abundant than we ever could have attained back home. Some of us happened upon these lives by accident – we tried a year abroad and found that we liked it – others made a conscious decision to pack up and leave for good. You’ll find us in Canada, all over Europe, in many parts of Asia, in Australia and New Zealand, and in most other countries of the globe. Do we miss our friends and family? Yes. Do we occasionally miss aspects of our former country? Yes. Do we plan on ever living again in the United States? Never. And those of us with permanent residence or citizenship can sponsor family members from back home for long-term visas in our adopted countries.

In closing, I want to remind you of something: unless you are an American Indian or a descendant of slaves, at some point your ancestors chose to leave their homeland in search of a better life. They weren’t traitors and they weren’t bad people, they just wanted a better life for themselves and their families. Isn’t it time that you continue their journey?

First Signs of Puberty Seen in Younger Girls

By DENISE GRADY
Published: August 9, 2010

A new study finds that girls are more likely today than in the past to start developing breasts by age 7 or 8.

The research is just the latest in a flood of reports over the last decade that have led to concern and heated debate about whether girls are reaching puberty earlier, and why it might be happening.

Increased rates of obesity are thought to play a major role, because body fat can produce sex hormones. Some researchers also suspect that environmental chemicals that mimic the effects of estrogen may be speeding up the clock on puberty, but that idea is unproved.

The issue is of concern for both medical and psychosocial reasons. Studies suggest that earlier puberty, as measured by the age at first menstruation, can slightly increase the risk of breast cancer, probably because it results in longer lifetime exposure to the hormones estrogen and progesterone, which can feed some tumors.

Although the new study did not look at menstrual age, breast growth is also a sign of hormone exposure, and some researchers fear that early development might also mean an increased cancer risk.

Socially and emotionally, life can be difficult for a girl who has a child’s mind in a woman’s body and is not ready to deal with sexual advances from men and boys, or cope with her own hormone-spiked emotions and sexual impulses.

“Our analysis shows clearly that the white participants entered puberty earlier than we anticipated,” said Dr. Frank M. Biro, the first author of the study and the director of adolescent medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

Overweight girls were more likely to have more breast development, the study showed. But Dr. Biro said he did not think weight was the whole story. He said it was possible that environmental chemicals were also playing a role, and added that he and his colleagues were now studying the girls’ hormone levels and lab tests measuring their exposures to various chemicals.

“It’s certainly throwing up a warning flag,” Dr. Biro said. “I think we need to think about the stuff we’re exposing our bodies to and the bodies of our kids. This is a wake-up call, and I think we need to pay attention to it.”

Dr. Catherine Gordon, a pediatric endocrinologist and specialist in adolescent medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston, said that so far, most evidence showed that neither breast development nor menstrual age had changed for white girls of normal weight.

The new study included 1,239 girls ages 6 to 8 who were recruited from schools and examined at one of three sites: the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital or Kaiser Permanente Northern California/University of California, San Francisco. The group was roughly 30 percent each white, black and Hispanic, and about 5 percent Asian.

At 7 years, 10.4 percent of white, 23.4 percent of black and 14.9 percent of Hispanic girls had enough breast development to be considered at the onset of puberty.

At age 8, the figures were 18.3 percent in whites, 42.9 percent in blacks and 30.9 percent in Hispanics. The percentages for blacks and whites were even higher than those found by a 1997 study that was one of the first to suggest that puberty was occurring earlier in girls.

The new study is being published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics. It was paid for by government grants and conducted at hospitals that are part of the Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Centers, a group formed in 2003 after breast cancer advocates petitioned Congress to set aside money to study possible links between environmental exposures and breast cancer.

If there is an ideal age when girls should reach puberty, no one knows what it is, said Dr. Marcia E. Herman-Giddens, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A girl needs a certain amount of body fat to start menstruating, and girls who are malnourished or ill may have delayed puberty.

In developed countries, the age of puberty dropped from the 19th to 20th centuries, as nutrition improved and infectious diseases were brought under better control, and it was seen as a sign of progress. But if the drop continues, at what point does it become pathological?

The debate over this issue started with a study published in 1997 by a research team led by Dr. Herman-Giddens. In the study, pediatricians around the country rated sexual maturation in 17,077 girls ages 3 to 12. The study found that breasts or pubic hair, or both, were far more common in 7- and 8-year-olds than medical textbooks had been reporting.

The researchers were also surprised to find that black girls developed significantly earlier than whites. But they cautioned that there had been few rigorous studies of puberty, so it was not clear whether their research was detecting a new trend or just discovering that the medical books were wrong.

The study led to a bit of a furor. Some endocrinologists doubted the findings and warned that if doctors and parents started blithely assuming that puberty at 7 or 8 was the new normal, they would overlook serious problems like endocrine diseases or tumors. But others warned that if the new findings were rejected, families would be frightened needlessly and fortunes wasted on batteries of tests for perfectly normal 7- and 8-year-old girls with budding breasts.

Dozens of studies have been published in the years since. Arguments continue, but many doctors accept the idea that heavier girls often develop earlier. And subsequent studies have also found that black and Hispanic girls mature earlier than whites, even when weight is taken into account. No one knows why. Though breasts may be sprouting earlier, the average age of first menstruation, between 12 and 13, has not really changed.

Dr. Vaneeta Bamba, director of the Diagnostic and Research Growth Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said that the 1997 study had “somewhat reshaped” endocrinologists’ thinking about the onset of puberty, but that most would still urge a thorough medical evaluation for any girl under 8 who was showing significant breast development or other signs of puberty. She said she doubted that the new study would change medical practice.

One objection to the 1997 study was that the pediatricians may have mistaken fat deposits for breast tissue in some girls, or differed in other ways in assessing the stage of breast development.

In the new study, the researchers went to great lengths to train examiners and make sure all were on the same page when it came to checking girls’ breasts and rating their stage of development.

Dr. Gordon said it would be important to continue the studies, and to try to find out whether environmental chemicals were having an effect.