APPLETON, WIS. — A review of the complex consequences on both humans and wildlife caused by the use of diethylstilbestrol (DES) and other endocrine disruptors — chemicals that mimic hormones — will be the focus of the final installment of Lawrence University’s environmental studies lecture series “The Fox River Through Time.”
Nancy Langston, associate professor of forest ecology and management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, presents “TOXIC BODIES: An Environmental History of Endocrine Disruptors” Thursday, Nov. 9 at 4:45 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102. The event is free and open to the public.
Langston will examine the conflicts over the FDA’s approval of DES, the first synthetic estrogen and the first chemical identified as an endocrine disruptor, despite research indicating it caused cancer in laboratory animals. DES was prescribed to nearly five million American women in the early 1940s as a treatment for menopause and to reduce miscarriage risks.
DES also was used on livestock as an agent to promote rapid weight gain. According to Langston, a wide range of wildlife was subsequently exposed to the hormone’s effects through the runoff of wastes from feedlots and other sources of contamination.
Like all endocrine disruptors, Langston argues that DES connects environmental histories of the body with environmental histories of wildlife and wild places. She believes “the human body has become the site where environmental degradation occurs in its most uncertain and troubling forms,” resulting in increased rates of reproductive cancers, infertility and intersexuality.
A forest and environmental historian, Langston is the author of two books, 2003’s “Where Land and Water Meet: A Western Landscape Transformed” and 1995’s “Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares.” Her current research focuses on a history of adaptive management of forested watersheds in northern Wisconsin and an examination of the links between ecosystem health and human health.
A member of the UW-Madison faculty since 1997, she earned a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College, a master’s degree from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in environmental studies from the University of Washington.
The “Fox River Through Time” environmental lecture series is sponsored by the Spoerl Lectureship in Science in Society. Established in 1999 by Milwaukee-Downer College graduate Barbara Gray Spoerl and her husband, Edward, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on the role of science and technology in societies worldwide.
