As my time with the frog professor at Berkeley draws to a close, I can’t resist addressing an elephant in the room. “Have you wondered,” I ask, “if [atrazine] is a hormone disruptor, if this can be playing any role in what we’re seeing happening in our youth today? When there are a lot of boys who say they feel like girls and girls who say they feel like boys?” “[It’s] very likely that chemicals like atrazine that can influence your hormonal balance—and we know it does so in humans—that potentially could influence things like sex or gender identity and orientation,” says Hayes.
