Poison accumulation cascades---extinction.

Figure 4 shows levels of PCB and DDT in skipjack tuna liver. Measurements are from the Pacific, Indian, and Southwest Atlantic oceans and do not cover the North Atlantic. There can be no such thing as locally limited environmental contamination. Convection through the water and air that make up the global ecosphere and interactions due to the movements of animal species such as migratory birds and fish that move with sea currents have the effect of disseminating contamination, so that environmental destruction spreads throughout the ecosphere. This may initially involve contamination at low concentration, but chemical compounding with other substances and reactions with various chemical elements lead to the secondary development of toxicity and bio-accumulation in a ‘domino effect’ of environmental destruction. Environmental contamination can no longer be a distant concern but is casting an unmistakeable shadow on the lives of modern humans. Environmental hormones have a multiple presence in our lives, not only in synthetic preservatives, colorants, and flavorings, herbicides and agricultural chemicals, but also for instance in dioxins emitted through waste incineration, and these substances have left residues in the bodies of nearly every human being.

The threat from environmental hormones highlighted by Colborn was that, mediated through the interaction between living organisms that takes place in the food chain, contaminants would undergo bio-accumulation and collect in high concentrations in the bodies of modern humans. This would mean damage to DNA, which is a ‘blueprint for preservation of the species.’ The contamination of animal wombs with environmental hormones amounts to the contamination of the global ecosphere, which is the amniotic fluid of all life on earth, in other words contamination of Gaia. This is because contamination of any one group of individuals, such as waterfowl, poses a danger to all living organisms, all intelligent life forms with a nervous system dependent on water and carbons. Waterfowl contamination leads ultimately to ‘Gaia contamination’, or contamination of the whole of the global ecosphere, which threatens human survival.