It's in the Water, Claimed RFK Jr., Erroneously

Democratic senators confronted Robert Kennedy Jr. at his confirmation hearing for the position of Health Secretary in the Trump administration on a number of inflammatory statements he has made in the past, including one about chemicals found in drinking water cause changes to the sexual orientation of children.

Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado (D) asked Kennedy, "Did you say that exposure to pesticides causes children to become transgender?"

Kennedy replied, "No, I never said that," but CNN and other news outlets claim otherwise.

During the Presidential campaign in July 2023, the news outlet wrote: "Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a history of repeatedly sharing unfounded conspiracies that man-made chemicals in the environment could be making children gay or transgender and causing the feminization of boys and masculinization of girls."

"I want to just pursue just one question on these, you know, the other endocrine disruptors because our children now, you know, we're seeing these impacts that people suspect are very different than in ages past about sexual identification among children and sexual confusion, gender confusion," Kennedy said on his podcast in June 2022. "These kinds of issues that are very, very controversial today."

But CNN writes that experts dispute Kennedy's claims, telling the outlet that his theories that "sexual identification" and "gender confusion" among children could be from their exposure to "endocrine disruptors" found in the environment are completely unfounded.

"CNN spoke to multiple experts who said there is no link between endocrine disruptors and children's gender and sexuality. While sex in in frogs is determined by environmental factors such as temperature and chemicals, Dr. Andrea Gore, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at University of Texas at Austin, said the sex of humans is determined at the moment of conception, and cannot later be altered by endocrine-disrupting chemicals."

Kennedy's assertion that chemicals – particularly in tap water – could turn people gay or trans has been a popular meme with conspiracy theorists, including conservative radio host Alex Jones, who said chemicals in the water were "turning the friggin' frogs gay."

The source of this meme is a 2010 study by Tyrone Hayes, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who published an alarming study: "One in 10 genetically male tadpoles that had been exposed to low-concentrations of atrazine in a lab had developed into female frogs with ovaries," reports the Politico site E&E News. "Some of those even mated with other male frogs and produced viable eggs. Other male tadpoles exposed to atrazine remained male, but produced lower levels of testosterone and higher levels of estrogen than those that had not been exposed."

And while other studies have indicated that atrazine causes early puberty in humans and preterm delivery. "There is nothing about the frog study – or any others – to suggest atrazine would change humans' sex."

Even Hayes weighed in on the controversy. "I study frogs because I like frogs, not because they are a stand-in for humans," Hayes told E&E News.

Frogs, like other amphibians, are naturally much more susceptible to even minor changes in their environment than humans. Other studies have found some species of frogs change sex during their tadpole phase in reaction to changes in water temperature.

"Equating frog and human development is just plain stupid," says Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity who has sued EPA to ban atrazine.