Exposure to chemicals in the environment has produced a women's health crisis that federal regulators and some health care professionals have been slow to respond to, according to speakers at the Women's Health & the Environment conference in Pittsburgh yesterday.

Conclusive scientific studies have linked exposure to pesticides, herbicides and a wide range of chemical pollutants in the water and air to cancers, miscarriages and a shortening of women's fertile lifespan, but the public isn't getting the message, conference keynoter Dr. Sandra Steingraber told an audience of 2,200 women at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center Downtown.

"There's a disconnect between what we as scientists know and what the people know," Dr. Steingraber said. "There are no pamphlets in the doctor's office that discuss the link between carcinogenic chemical exposure and health. It's just not part of the doctor-patient relationship because many physicians are not trained in environmental health."

Adequate federal regulation of chemical toxins in the environment is also lagging far behind the science, she said, which shows that exposure to many legally sold and used chemicals can cause cancer, asthma, diabetes and strokes in women, attention deficit disorders, learning disabilities and cancer in fetuses, and the early onset of sexual maturity in young girls, causing an increased risk for breast cancer.

"We have 21st century science but 19th century regulation," Dr. Steingraber said. "Laws set threshold exposure limits but they don't necessarily change when new science indicates changes should be made."

She said new research in fetal toxicology, for example, challenges the regulatory approach that sets safe levels for exposure to chemical contaminants.

"That's a 'dose makes the poison' approach and it doesn't take into account the higher susceptibility of women and young children," Dr. Steingraber said. "The timing makes the poison as much as the dose."

Devra Davis, head of the Environmental Oncology Center at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and part of a panel discussing new science on women's health, said that unexplained patterns of breast and cervical cancers suggest environmental factors are a cause.

"We think that the main factors are the environmental exposures a person receives over a lifetime," Dr. Davis said, noting that certain professions -- solvent workers, nurses and dental assistants, painters and hairdressers -- have a higher cancer risk for women.

"If we need sick or dead people before we take action, then we are making a big mistake," Dr. Davis said. "We need to keep these things out of our bodies in the first place so that we are not having these same debates 20 years from now."

John Peterson Myers, founder of Environmental Health Sciences, an organization that focuses on environmental links to health, said recent studies show chemicals in the environment can alter gene behavior and human health at extremely low doses, and that fetal exposures can have a profound effect on the health of that person as an adult.

"Our children are the first generation in several centuries that are at risk of being less healthy than previous generations," he said.

The daylong conference, sponsored by the Heinz Endowments and Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC, was kicked off by Teresa Heinz Kerry, who urged those in attendance to act in their own defense.

"This time it's personal, because our health and our lives are at stake," she said. "We cannot shop our way out of this crisis. We need smart science, we need smart policy and we need smart consumers."