Girl, you'll be a woman sooner than expected — either because of estrogen-mimicking chemicals or obesity:
“We’re not backing up all events in puberty,” says Sandra Streingraber, biologist and visiting scholar at Ithaca College. “We’re backing up the starting point.” She has examined the research on female puberty and compiled a summary in an August 2007 report called “The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls.” The report was financed by the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group interested in exploring environmental causes of that disease.Earlier breast development is now so typical that the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society urged changing the definition of “normal” development. Until 10 years ago, breast development at age 8 was considered an abnormal event that should be investigated by an endocrinologist. Then a landmark study in the April 1997 journal Pediatrics written by Marcia Herman-Giddens, adjunct professor at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that among 17,000 girls in North Carolina, almost half of African Americans and 15% of whites had begun breast development by age 8. Two years later, the society suggested changing what it considered medically normal.