Toxic Conceptions: The Assessment and Regulation of Male-Mediated Transgenerational Effects of Chemical Exposures
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Scientific research increasingly confirms the potential for health effects to be transmitted from men to their offspring as a result of men’s exposures, prior to conception, to endocrine-disrupting chemicals. This article examines how “male-mediated transgenerational effects” are addressed by the discretionary, risk-based approach to chemical assessment enabled under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999. Informed by Cynthia Daniels’ theory of reproductive masculinity, the authors critically examine recent assessments of two classes of everyday toxics ubiquitous in Canadian households—phthalates and brominated flame retardants.** In failing to give weight to emerging evidence of male-mediated transgenerational effects, these assessments arguably reproduce gendered assumptions, situating men as secondary to reproduction and reinforcing the idea that responsibility for toxic exposures is a maternal matter. The authors argue that Canadian governance of endocrine-disrupting chemicals would be improved by greater attention to how men’s exposures to toxic chemicals may contribute to male-mediated transgenerational effects. Further, the article identifies deficiencies in the legislative scheme that contribute to ongoing failures to meaningfully assess or regulate endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.020 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.035 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".