I'd heard people talk about this, but had never read an official news article ...
Contracepting the Environment
For people (like me) who don't like following all the links, this is an article about the effects of contraceptives on the environment. They're entering streams through sewage (which, though well-filtered, misses things like hormones, antibiotics, and steroids) and doing weird things to the fish. For example, in the study mentioned, they found a disproportionate number of female fish to male fish, and many mutant "intersex" fish.
A study in New Jersey discovered hormones and other medications in municipal tap water supplies throughout the state. No one knows what they might do to people, but I might venture a guess that if people are anything like fish, it might be very bad indeed.
5 comments:
Kinda makes you think what happens to people.
Sure does. :P
Are you one of the people who felt weird in Florence (the highest contracepting city in the EU, by the way)? I sure did. Some people were queasy, others were paranoid or jumpy like me. After Mr. Akers telling us about contraceptives suddenly ending up in the water supply, I began to get pretty worried.
yeah I was. when we got there, i felt this feeling of uneasiness. I just had a bad feeling.
Me too. Although I didn't know how much of it was due to the horror stories... At any rate, I was paranoid the whole time. A lot of other people were snappy, and some were just sick. And I'd been drinking the tap water -- there was nothing else.
I've also thought that maybe this could help explain why there are so many "excessively happy" people these days, especially in big cities. Also infertility is much more common than it used to be. A connection? Possibly.
It's not just contraceptives. Many chemicals are estrogenic.
Some people think this is causing a decrease in male sperm count, since European areas that use organic farming don't see that problem.
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