Did you know that the average age of puberty for girls nowadays is 10 for white girls and 8.9 for black girls?
And not to sound like a cantankerous grandmother, but back when ecologist Sandra Steingraber was a sixth grader (1971) most girls didn’t hit puberty until 11.
“But what’s the big deal?” you may be asking yourself.
As Sandra explains in The Burlington Free Press article “Falling age of puberty in girls presents health risk,” early puberty opens the exposure of estrogen to girls and increases the risk of breast cancer, which already strikes one in eight U.S. women.
Plus, “puberty re-sculpts the brain and allows it to perform some tasks — such as abstract thinking — that it couldn’t master during childhood. But the childhood brain has some advantages over the adult brain: It’s easier for children to start a foreign language, learn a musical instrument or try out a sport, Steingraber said. Early puberty robs girls of this time.” writes the author, Molly Walsh.
Read more from journalist Molly Walth and ecologist Sandra Steingraber, here.
A world renowned ecologist, Sandra Steingraber is an expert on the links between cancer and the environmentl reforming chemical policy and contimination without consent. To learn more about Sandra Steingraber, please visit JodiSolomonSpeakers/SandraSteingraber.