Dioxin

You may have read in chapter 2 that endometriosis occurs in monkeys and apes, but it’s rarely severe. Researchers at the Harlow Primate Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, have been studying dioxin’s long-term effect on reproduction in female rhesus monkeys.

In a systematic study that started 15 years ago, the Harlow researchers began feeding 16 monkeys small amounts of dioxin in their diet. This addition to their diet was continued for four years.

Unexpectedly, six to ten years afterward, three monkeys eventually died of debilitation from endometriosis.

Tennessee gynecologist Dan Martin operated on the surviving monkeys and was staggered to find that there was severe endometriosis in most of the monkeys given the highest dose of dioxin (25 parts per trillion). A smaller proportion of the monkeys given 5 parts per trillion had moderate to severe disease.

None of the monkeys given no dioxin had moderate or severe endometriosis -- they just had the mild or no endometriosis normally found in monkeys anywhere.

Several studies are now underway to correlate levels of dioxin and related chemicals in women with the presence of endometriosis. If the association is confirmed, the search for other environmental toxins, and how they operate on an internal tissue this way, will be on. Its importance for women of the future, as well as for our understanding of endometriosis today and what causes it, is immense.

See chapter 9 for dioxin’s possible role in oligospermia.