----- forwarded message ----- Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2002 16:37:43 -0700 From: R <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Fwd: Birth control pill causing problems for fish
>Subject: Birth control pill causing problems for fish >Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 09:07:33 -0700 > >< http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20020105/1042548.html> http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20020105/1042548.html > >Birth control pill causing problems for fish: DFO >Gender-bending effects: Synthetic estrogen absorbed by fish downstream > >Tom Spears >Ottawa Citizen > >Women who take birth control pills or hormone therapy are flushing enough >hormones down the toilet to make male fish downstream produce eggs, a >Canadian study shows. > >Synthetic estrogen in the women's urine goes through sewage treatment >plants without being completely broken down, and the fish absorb it, with >bad effects following. > >Male fish produce eggs in their testes. Female fish are stimulated by the >extra hormones to produce eggs at the wrong times of year. And there are >questions, still unanswered, about whether these chemically altered fish >are capable of reproducing at all. > >Scientists have seen this "gender-bending" effect in fish downstream from >sewage plants, but lacked proof that birth control pills are a cause. > >Karen Kidd of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans introduced >synthetic hormone from birth control pills into a remote 34-hectare lake >in northwestern Ontario, west of Dryden. The male lake trout, white >suckers, fathead minnows and pearl dace turned up this fall with proteins >that females use to manufacture egg cells, and in some cases with the eggs >themselves. > >The lake experiment used the amount of hormone that would come from 6,000 >women taking the pill, she said. > >"The question now is whether this feminization is affecting the population >size or sustainability," she said. "Can males with eggs in their testes >reproduce effectively? Can they contribute to the population?" > >It will take another summer of adding chemicals, and a couple of years of >counting fish afterwards, to know the full effects. > >But Ms. Kidd is finding an interested audience in Vancouver this weekend, >where she will show her early results to a conference of fisheries >scientists today. > >"People consume the birth control pills and it's lost from their bodies >and goes into the sewage," said Peter Leavitt, a biology professor at the >University of Regina. > >"So we get this huge population in sources like cities, dumping this very >high concentration of hormones into the water bodies. And the question is: >Is it having an influence? > >"It seems to be mimicking some of the reproductive hormones that other >organisms use, and it's basically messing up their reproductive >strategies," he said. > >"I think it's really significant," because no one thought of human sewage >as a source of this type of pollution before, he said. "And what Karen is >showing is that there are consequences of large numbers of people living >in an area.... It's not so much that we're destroying their habitat. But >we're actually changing the chemical environment in which they live and >breathe." > >For 10 years, scientists have studied chemicals that act like estrogen in >fish, other wildlife, and even humans that eat tainted fish. Many of these >come from pesticides or industrial waste and are never intended to be like >hormones at all. > >But this study is unique in looking at real hormones flushed down the drain. > >Ms. Kidd says both natural and synthetic estrogen go into the sewage >system in urine, but bacteria take longer to break down the synthetic >version, which means more of it gets into the fish. > >+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ >NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted >material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have >expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit >research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: > ><http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml >
