Synthetic chemicals have infiltrated every facet of our lives. They are on our lawns, in our homes and even in the food we eat. There is no longer a clean, uncontaminated place, or any human beings who haven't acquired a considerable load of persistent chemicals in their bodies. We continue to design new technologies at a pace faster than we can begin to fathom their impact on the environment and ourselves.

Over the past 50 years, male sperm counts have plummeted by 50 percent, while women have suffered a dramatic rise in hormone-related cancers and other reproductive disorders. Our Stolen Future provides an alarming account of emerging scientific research giving evidence that a wide range of man-made chemicals actually mimic our natural hormones, disrupting normal reproductive and developmental processes. The book is a collaboration by three authors, Theo Colborn, John Peterson Myers and Dianne Dumanoski. The first two are scientists and the third is an award- winning environmental journalist.

The story begins in 1987 with Colborn, a 58-year-old grandmother with a brand-new Ph.D. in zoology and a new job to assess the environmental health of the Great Lakes. Colborn acts as the detective in this scientific mystery, as she unfolds evidence that links birth defects, sexual abnormalities and reproductive failure in wildlife surrounding the Great Lakes to hormone-disrupting chemicals.

Hormones are specialized chemicals that regulate bodily functions. Each hormone is produced in a specialized tissue. When the time is right, hormones are produced and released into the bloodstream by a variety of organs known as endocrine glands. These glands include the testicles, ovaries, the pancreas, the adrenal glands, the thyroid, the parathyroid, and the thymus.

Hormones function as chemical messengers that tell your body how to react to certain situations. For example, the adrenal glands produce a hormone called adrenaline which leads to an increased heart rate and muscle tension when released, often as a response to stressful situations.

The authors explain that throughout our lifetime we are exposed to hundreds of synthetic chemicals which lie dormant in our body fat and tissues. Dumanoski writes that "virtually anyone willing to put up the money for the tests will find at least 250 chemical contaminants in their body fat, regardless of whether you live in Gary, Indiana, or on a remote island in the South Pacific. Ironically, some of those living the farthest from industrial centers and sources of pollution have suffered the greatest contamination: these chemicals travel long distances and build up along the way to high concentrations, especially in the Arctic, which is becoming a final resting ground."

As adults such exposure may have no immediate effect on us, yet when pregnant mothers pass these hormone disruptors to their babies through the placenta and breast feeding, they can have devastating effects. The most critical time for hormones to do their job is in the womb. Hormones guide the development of the unborn child, orchestrating the growth of the organs, tissues, and various systems. Colborn drives the point home that "normal development depends on getting the right hormone messages in the right amount to the right place at the right time."

The realization that synthetic chemicals are disrupting the natural processes of our bodies is not new. Throughout the book Colborn introduces animal studies dating back to the 1930s that illustrate the effects of hormone disruptors. It has been known that these chemicals impede development but no one believed that what was happening in animals could also affect us. Colborn refers to a book Rachel Carson wrote 30 years ago called Silent Spring that first warned us about cancer-causing chemicals such as DDT and PCBs, yet only now are we beginning to recognize the consequences of this chemical invasion.

Our Stolen Future chronicles the havoc that hormone-disrupting chemicals have caused in so many lives. A major medical tragedy occurred between 1950 and 1970 when as many as 6 million babies were exposed to DES (di-ethyl-stilbestrol), a drug that mimics the female hormone estrogen. Doctors originally prescribed DES to prevent miscarriages and then began to recommend it for all pregnancies as if it were a wonder drug.

"Despite all appearances, she is not female," Colburn quotes from a medical journal. "Although such individuals have grown up as normal-looking girls, they have the XY chromosomes of males and testicles in their abdomen instead of ovaries. But because a defect makes them insensitive to testosterone, they never responded to the hormone cues that trigger masculinization. They never developed the body and brain of a male." In less extreme cases of such hormone disruption, males may have ambiguous genitals, abnormally small penises or undescended testicles.

Whether or not a child will be affected by these synthetic chemicals depends on the timing of the drug use, not the actual dosage. A small dose of a drug or hormone that might have no effect at one point in a baby's development might be devastating just a few weeks earlier.

Dumanoski does a wonderful job of taking complex scientific concepts and transforming them into a language that is readable to everyone, even those people who have no background in science. She blends scientific data with illustrative metaphors to drive points across.

Around the world, over 100,000 synthetic chemicals are now on the market. Every year 1,000 new man-made chemicals are introduced, most of them without sufficient testing and review. The author's concern about these chemicals is the persistence they have in the environment. Most do not biodegrade and even after industries stop producing them, they live on inside of us.

The authors leave us with a series of unanswered questions about the future of synthetic chemicals in our bodies. They stress the need for more extensive research. They urge us to defend ourselves and our children against the chemical invasion, to try to change what technology has made us accustomed to.

Myers captures the never-ending cycle of technology when he says, "Nothing, however, will be more important to human well-being and survival than the wisdom to appreciate that however great our knowledge, our ignorance is also vast. In this ignorance we have taken huge risks and inadvertently gambled with survival."