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Endocrine Disrupters and the Pill
- Introduction
- How EDs Work
- Our Stolen Future
- Drugs in the Environment
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Examples of EDs
- Government Testing
- Laws
- The Pill as an ED
- History of the Pill
- Case Study: Coastal Waters
- Case Study: Fish
- Case Study: Men in Italy
- Solutions
- What you can do!
- Further Information
Comments & questions to:
khornbach@macalester.edu
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Case Study:Fish
With the concentration on marine environments, recent
studies in Washington state and Canada have found the detrimental
effects of synthetic estrogens can be especially extreme on male fish.
Two separate studies conducted in June of 2003 found that synthetic
estrogens have two major affects on male fish populations. One found
that synthetic estrogens seriously affect the fertility of male rainbow
trout salmon. The second study found that fish in a lake in Ontario
lost many of their male traits and became feminized. The first study
found that fish in Western Washington state found that synthetic
estrogens have shown up in rivers, lakes, and even Puget Sound. The
research conducted by scientists at the Battelle Marine Sciences
Laboratory in Sequim. The study examined the impact of synthetic
estrogens on adult trout instead of
juveniles. During the tests, "adult trout in caged pens were exposed to
ethynylestradiol, a synthetic estrogen. After two months of exposure,
the fish were spawned with a healthy female. Researchers discovered
that the exposed trout were half as fertile as fish kept in clean
water" (Stiffler). Scientists noted that fish were not the only animals
affected by synthetic estrogens. Amounts of the estrogens have been
found in frogs, river otters, and other fish species making the "male
species less male" (Stiffler). Further research is planned to see how
much of a concentration is needed to affect fertility in species.
According to a study by Canadian scientists fish
that are exposed to synthetic estrogens become feminized in their
traits. In the study, scientists put chemicals from birth control pill
into a remote lake in Ontario. Their experiment showed that "all male
fish in the lake- from tiny tadpoles to large trout- were "feminized,"
meaning they had egg proteins growing abnormally in their bodies"
(Borenstein). In fact, the impact of the synthetic estrogens
caused the population of the Fathead minnow in the lake, one that had
numbered in the thousands, to fall to nearly zero, because of the
inability of the fish to reproduce. The findings of this experiment
were truly startling, and have raised more concerns about the growing
problems of EDs in the environment. These results also show the
repercussions that will affect large areas of wildlife. This is not
just a problem in fish; instead it will spread through the food chain
following the principals of biomagnification and end up impacting other
wildlife as well as humans. Synthetic estrogens are a very real threat,
and experiments on fish have shown this.
All information on this page refers to two articles hosted on the Our Stolen Future website: One by Seth Borenstein and the other by Lisa Stiffler
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Last updated: 5/2/2006
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