We talk with Andreas Gies about the effects of hormon-like substannces on humans and possible protective measures.Ingolf Baur: Scientists have seen that these environmental hormones and these environmental active substances actually have a strong effect, a strong impact on animals, but what about us humans?" Andreas Gies: Well, we see some effects on animals, for example effects on reproduction or effects on the development of organs. And we see similar, or the same effects within the population in Germany. For example, we know that endocrine distruptors — environmental hormones -- can disturb spermiogenesis, the making of sperm within your testis. And we see that in Germany the quality of sperm has decreased during last 20 years. It has decreased from 120 million sperms per milliliter twenty years ago to 40 million today. And we are afraid that almost half of the people in Germany, half the men in Germany are not able to perform within reproduction as they performed 20 years ago.   But that’s really frightening. And can you really prove that it's due to those environmental hormones? Proof is always difficult, but we know that this is a fact that might disturb humans. And I think we are looking for risk factors. And, without a doubt, environmental hormones are one of the risk factors that may contribute to these effects. Hormones actually play a strong role in the development of cancer. Do these environmentally active substances maybe also interfere there? What we see in Germany and in many other countries is that hormonal-dependent forms of cancer are increasing very steeply -- more steeply than other forms of cancer. For instance, testicular cancer and prostate cancer in men, or breast cancer in women. That's a problem. And, in animal tests, we see these forms of changes within organs that may lead to cancer in humans too. But actually these environmentally active substances come in concentrations which are very low compar...