Chemical sleuth. (Dr. Theodora Colborn, zoologist of the World Wildlife Fund)

Far from humans, hundreds of miles from any continent, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the blackfooted albatross feeds. It drops its single egg on Eastern and Sand Islands, sheltering it with a ring of grass. Yet these birds, perhaps as remote from industrial society as it is possible to be, carry the same suite of chemicals in their bodies as do the birds of the Great Lakes.

"They have the organochlorines," says Dr. Theodora Colborn, a zoologist and senior scientist at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). "PCBs, furans, dioxins, DDT, and DDT breakdown products. They show eggshell damage. And the organochlorines in their bodies are at the threshold where other effects are likely."

The blackfooted albatross is a graphic example of a principal finding of Colborn's research: that there are no animals on the planet, including humans, that have not been contaminated with synthetic organochlorines. This family of chemicals - as well as a number of new chemicals, not easily identified because they may contain no chlorine at all - can mimic or block the action of hormones in the body. They may therefore interfere with the development of the endocrine, nervous, and immune systems in fetuses and the young.

First introduced in quantity after World War II, these "endocrine disruptors" are found primarily in pesticides, industrial chemicals, plastics, and discharges from paper and pulp mills. Some of them accumulate in the tissues of humans and wildlife because they do not break down easily; once released into the environment, they stay intact for years or decades. Raindrops, falling anywhere in the world, bear their traces.

It was Colborn who pulled together threads from the literature in biology, biochemistry, toxicology, and zoology to create an overarching theory of synthetic endocrine disruptors and their effects on humans and wildlife. She pointed out the similarities in the known results of exposure to these chemicals, ranging from incomplete sexual development of male fish in the Great Lakes to the reproductive problems of women whose mothers took the anti-miscarriage drug DES (diethyl-stilbestrol) during pregnancy.

And Colborn has also pointed out the similarities between these effects and more widespread effects seen in large populations: declining sperm counts and a rising incidence of testicular cancer in men, an increase in sterility among wildlife, drops …