Something unusual is happening in a heavily polluted small community in Canada. Boys are becoming increasingly rare in the land designated for the Chippewa Indigenous people in the town of Sarnia, located in the “Chemical Valley” of Ontario.
Here, residents take pride in their youth sports teams with four children, but three of them are girls.
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Chippewa Indigenous People (Photo: theplatelady) |
Researchers have found that the number of boys born in this community has severely decreased over the past 13 years, while the rate of girls has increased. Currently, the number of girls being born is double that of boys, despite the natural tendency to maintain a balance between genders.
Scientists increasingly believe that pollution is the culprit behind this phenomenon, and what is happening here may shed light on the mysteries of “missing boys” in maternity wards across the industrialized world.
Typically, the average global ratio is 106 boys born for every 100 girls. This slight difference is seen as a natural compensation for the fact that boys are more likely to die during hunts and conflicts. However, this figure has slightly decreased in developed countries over the past quarter-century.
In England, the ratio has dropped to 105/100 since 1977, meaning that each year, over 3,000 more girls are born compared to boys. The situation is similar in countries like the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, and Nordic nations.
Several explanations have been proposed, including increased stress and the number of single mothers. It has also been found that women in difficult circumstances tend to give birth to more girls than boys. However, the situation in Sarnia, at the Canada-U.S. border, is drawing attention to the issue of pollution.
The Chippewa Indigenous people have lived in this area for a long time, at the southern tip of Lake Huron, not far from Detroit. Their land rights were recognized in 1827, but most of it was taken over by industries in the 1960s. Today, their homes and forests are completely surrounded by one of the largest petrochemical complexes in the world, accounting for 40% of Canada’s production of plastics, synthetic rubber, and other chemical products.
The air is foul, and the land is heavily contaminated with hazardous chemicals.
It was the youth baseball teams that first drew attention to the fact that more girls were being born than boys among the 870 residents of the village. Among them is Ada Lockridge, a 42-year-old homemaker and member of the village board. She and her sister each have eight daughters and only one son.
Ada began counting all the children born in the village starting in 1984. Until 1993, the number of boys and girls was normally balanced, but from that point on, the number of “princes” began to decline.
Currently, only 35% of the children are boys, and there are no signs of this ratio changing.
Research does not prove any specific cause but emphasizes the “serious pollution situation over many years.” Part of the issue is that other non-Indigenous communities living downwind from this industrial complex are experiencing a lesser decline in boys being born, while communities located upwind are not facing the same issue.
Additionally, numerous studies have also indicated a change in the sex of fish and wildlife in the nearby lake.
These findings align with many other studies around the world. Those exposed to high levels of dioxins from the 1976 accident in Seveso, Italy, also had a birth rate of girls double that of boys. This phenomenon is similarly observed in Russian men who inhaled large amounts of pesticide chemicals. Similar situations have been found in Israel and Taiwan. Furthermore, Brazilian scientists have reported a decline in the birth rate of boys in the most polluted areas of São Paulo.
T. An
