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Birth Control Pills Threaten Fish Stocks
BarbaraHudson writes Experimental research has shown that small amounts of estrogen in waste water can lead to rapid large-scale changes in fish populations. From the article: "The lead researcher of a new study is calling for improvements to some of Canada's waste water treatment facilities after finding that introducing the birth control pill in waterways created a chain reaction in a lake ecosystem that nearly wiped out a freshwater fish. 'Right away, the male fish started to respond to the estrogen exposure by producing egg yolk proteins and shortly after that they started to develop eggs,' she said in an interview from Saint John, N.B. 'They were being feminized.' Kidd said shortly after introducing the estrogen, the number of fathead minnow crashed, reducing numbers to just one per cent of the population. 'It was really unexpected that they would react so quickly and so dramatically,' she said. 'The crash in the population was very evident and very dramatic and very rapid and related directly to the estrogen addition.'" Estrogen pollution in waterways has been an issue for over a decade now.
Exploding human population will threaten fish stocks.
This might explain why grown men are more and more behaving like frightened old women these days.
Proverbs 21:19
a) estrogen in the water
b) more kids who will one day fish.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
One of the problems with cities is that they concentrate pollution. One of the dirty secrets of cities is that their governments do the bare minimum required to get rid of their waste. I remember growing up on the Jersey Shore and some days the beaches would be littered with tampon tubes because NYC just dumped their sewage offshore. When you're five, you just don't understand what's happening - I'm surprised our parents let us spend the day in that water.
The trouble is, these governments do everything they can to externalize the costs of living in the city onto the people (and apparently minnows) who don't. The wastewater treatment plants discussed here could absolutely destroy the estrogen before releasing it into the environment - but the sewage bills might have to double to make that happen. The city folks would undoubtedly scream about "unfairness" if their water was effectively treated before discharge.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
We know that a whole host of chemicals do this, estrogen from birth control pills being just one chemical out of literally hundreds.
This is a problem but it seems like we might have multiple contributors of estrogens in drinking water with birth control pills not the most significant. Not the best source but: http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
Well, they did make a big deal about paying for the pill via O-Care. Folks can have some fun twisting that, I suppose.
"Estrogens ain't estrogens (Sol)"
http://www.arhp.org/publicatio...
@butchersong
And why is this not "the best source" - peer reviewed... did I miss some bad science?
I thought an experiment based on a false belief that estrogen from the Pill is the same estrogen that is found in waterways was bad science - like the flawed UK research it was "based on".
The researcher refers to "estrogen-like" in the science press, but the term "birth control pills" is quoted in the non-science press. Need for publicity, bad reporting, or both?
cough*Dairy farmers*cough(??)
It could result in a monumental political battle between fluke and Fluke.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Birth control pills contain substances chemically like oestrogen. What did you think was in them?
Maybe Viagra on the seas is the solution. More horny fishes will reproduce more.... damn.... I just found my master's thesis.
Peta wishes people would think of the Sea Kittens!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Birth control pills meant to control fish population ???
From TFA "It's a problem that we can certainly resolve with better waste water treatment,"
It is unwise to ascribe motive
The sheer amount of SSRI's in the water will keep the fish happy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/hea...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I counter your citation-less speculation with my own: Or not.
Careful, the next thing you know someone will suggest you're after a eugenics program and then comes the obligatory Nazi reference... ooops....
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Women will do ANYTHING to 'get a man'. For most women, being single is the worst thing in the world. They will sleep with ANY scumbag, as long as they 'have a man'. Hence most women will sleep with jerks who can't keep it up with a condom on. Hence most women use the pill, rather than condoms, in spite of the fact that the pill offers no protection against VD whatsoever
Normally I would urge someone like you to use a condom to help prevent the spread of stupidity. However, with your personality, there's no worry about that.
As for the rest ... sheesh!
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Seems that the slow switch to low dose birth control pills will have a side effect of helping this sort of pollution as well. It won't prevent it of course, but there is a big different between 1970s pills and those prescribed today, now just to get those who have been on the pills for 20+ years to switch to something different. Has the side effect of lowering cancer rates as well.
You seriously don't think that's 'much diminished' compared to a 99% drop in population?
Why are people flushing them in the first place instead of throwing them away normally? What other random things are people putting down their toilets?
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TangoMargarine never learned what a 'flerzy' was in middle school! It's a hair do, and a process and on point to your comment.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
These stories have been circulating for decades. I've yet to see any that correlate estrogen in contraceptive pills with the quantities of estrogen in waste water. Modern contraceptive pills use minute amounts. Additionally, our bodies produce estrogen in the liver,adrenal glands, breasts (in women), and fat cells (are increased obesity rates producing more waste estrogen?). We put far larger amounts into some cosmetics and shampoos. We also use synthetic estrogen compounds in substantial amounts plastics in our food packaging and containers. They've long been known to leech into our food and are harmful endocrine disruptors which can have effects that are passed on to our offspring, including infertiility and cancers.
So, have they established that contraceptive pills are the source of the estrogen theyr'e finding in the water? Anyone have a link to the study handy?
At least it has been completely proven to have absolutely no effect on human males. Oh wait...
If you're going to mock me for something you say I've never heard of, at least spell it right so I can google it.
Thanks for your confusing comment that totally fails to help.
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Yeah, I thought we were also dosing farm animals with massive amounts of estrogen to improve milk production.
A Flerzy is when you pick a nerd up by his feet, put his head in the toilet and flush.
It's the only reason I kind of wish there were emos when I was in middle school. That hair is asking to be flerzied.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You mean a "swirly"? The heck is "flerzy" supposed to come from?
Well, it's technically related to my question and we all know that's the best kind of correct.
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As I recall studies have been done confirming that women on the pill have many times (potentially hundreds) as much estrogen in their urine as the baseline. The quantities of estrogen *can't* be minute - they have to so excessively overwhelm the womans natural hormone levels that they render her infertile, and they have to be able to accomplish that despite her body's attempts to restore balance to her system as quickly as possible to avoid being rendered genetically irrelevant.
As for BPAs and other pseudo-estrogens - they tend to leach out primarily when the plastic is frozen, and in quantities far lower than in the pill. There would have to be MASSIVE plastic deposits within the waterways to cause a similar result.
Furthermore the summary suggests that the feminization of fish began very rapidly after the introduction of the pill to the area in question. Now sure, correlation doesn't imply causality - but in this case it sure looks an awful lot like a smoking gun.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Dogs have tested that for me. Either sex, the grass dies.
I was under the impression one took them orally, not by jamming them up your urethra.
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Probably because they've already taken them? The estrogen doesn't just disappear into a woman's body - it gets flushed into her urine as quickly as possible as her body fight to restore its fertility.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It's certainly not impossible. But it's also quite likely that the reduction in social stigma over the last decades have made such people far more likely to openly embrace their differences instead of forcing themselves to fit society's expectations to avoid being ostracized.
A potential research experiment would be to see whether openly anomalous biologically male individuals have increased at a substantially faster rate than biologically female ones - presumably elevated environmental estrogen levels would have a disproportionate effect on the sexuality of biologically male individuals, so if such a disproportional shift is not present it would undermine your hypothesis.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
>too much estrogen is a dose of testosterone
Umm... no. Estrogen and testosterone are very different hormones with VERY different and largely unrelated effects. Women don't have both hormones coursing through their bodies just as some sort of balancing act.
>Not all people should be allowed to reproduce.
Fortunately most every culture that has access to cheap birth control and good enough cheap health care that infants reliably survive to adulthood tends to fall to nearly zero population growth within a generation or so, and fall to negative growth as the standards of living improves further and children begin to interfere with luxury spending. Which is great news for those of us that don't think anyone likely to have the power to implement a eugenics program should be allowed to do so. Just socialize children's health care and birth control, maybe invest some PR dollars in popularizing family planning to speed things up, and the problem solves itself.
Especially if you can shut up the religious extremists saying birth control is evil. I was glad to see the Pope adopt a hands-off stance on birth control recently, now if we could just get the American extremists off the bandwagon as well we could start disrupting the population problems in the US as well.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Oh. I read the title as "people flushing unused birth control pills threatens," not "the intended cycle of taking birth control pills and their normal chemical output threatens."
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I misread the title as:
Birth Control Pills Threaten Fish Sticks
Birth Control Pills Threaten Fish Stocks
Buy Buy Buy... time to back the truck up.
Often when stock prices go down due on bad news: the fall is short lived and represents a buying opportunity.
Sorry (J/K), couldn't resist.
Transgender is a mental condition in the age of lazy psychologists, a consumer biased patient population, and abuse of for-profit medical solutions.
There is no such thing as a transgendered person; just people with gender identity disorder who are placated with drugs and operations. Then a large number of idiots who buy into all the crap and shame anybody who dares poitn out the truth.
Only partially right, and for all the wrong reasons. The is no longer anything called "gender identity disorder". The real "disorder" is societies failure to accept this as a treatable medical condition for some people, corrected with hormones and a sex change. The American Psychiatric Association has this to say about gender dysphoria.
DSM-5 aims to avoid stigma and ensure clinical care for individuals who see and feel themselves to be a different gender than their assigned gender. It replaces the diagnostic name “gender identity disorder” with “gender dysphoria,” as well as makes other important clarifications in the criteria. It is important to note that gender nonconformity is not in itself a mental disorder. The critical element of gender dysphoria is the presence of clinically significant distress associated with the condition.
... and that stress in large part comes from people who are either ignorant or actively haters. But that's becoming less of a problem as more of us speak out.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Birth control pills contain substances chemically like oestrogen.
No shit?
What did you think was in them?
Which ones? Beyaz, Gianvi, Loryna, Ocella, Safyral, Syeda, Yasmin, Yaz, or Zarah? Ethynyl-estradiol.
The hysterical left has latched onto pseudo estrogens from plastics as the new boogie man.
The hysterical latch onto nothing. Seriously.
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Well, maybe we can convince some cities like Victoria BC from dumping their raw sewage directly into the mouth of the Puget Sound. http://environment.about.com/o...
They say they screen out the larger pieces of solid waste, but everything else (drugs, detergents, cooking waste, every sick person's waste) goes straight into the ocean.
I just hope they never have a person with HIV, Hepatitis C, Ebola, STDs, Clostridium difficile, Salmonella, or MRSA living or visiting there.
~~
I've yet to see any that correlate estrogen in contraceptive pills with the quantities of estrogen in waste water. Modern contraceptive pills use minute amounts. Additionally, our bodies produce estrogen in the liver,adrenal glands, breasts (in women), and fat cells (are increased obesity rates producing more waste estrogen?). We put far larger amounts into some cosmetics and shampoos. We also use synthetic estrogen compounds in substantial amounts plastics in our food packaging and containers. They've long been known to leech into our food and are harmful endocrine disruptors which can have effects that are passed on to our offspring, including infertiility and cancers
Or maybe, just maybe, the right solution is to start eliminating *all* of those sources - sounds to me like you're trying awfully hard to defend birth control hormones for reasons other than the provable scientific fact that environmental estrogens and xenoestrogens are wreaking havoc on our entire ecosystem, people and animals.
The thing that differentiates hormones from other kinds of chemicals is that a tiny amount produces an enormous biological response. The smart thing to do is to quit acting like bathing our bodies and our environments in this stuff doesn't matter... (The studies you seek are out there and numerous - use Google yourself, dammit.)
BTW, I'm far from a green weenie (I strongly support fracking and nuclear, and believe the science shows that man made global warming is complete and utter BS), but I do believe that there are two very large, very real technological dangers to our biology that will finally become recognized in the coming decades - environmental sex hormones (far more often female than male, but both are troublesome), and modern digital wireless communications with sharp square-wave edges which are more and more proving to affect biology through methods other than heating or ionization.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
And as I speculate above, are they controlling for phytoestrogens released by the decay of aquatic plant life? which in lakes tends to increase over time with the natural decline of a lake into a swamp. (Unless dredged out by humans.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
For that, one should look not in the water, but at the shift in diet to include a great deal more soy and flaxseed products (and flaxseed has 3x the level of phytoestrogens AND is more readily absorbed from the gut):
http://web.archive.org/web/201...
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?