We’ve heard a lot of arguments against hormonal birth control: the synthetic hormones make some women sick, they can increase the risk of potentially fatal blood clots — and some people just think they’re unnatural (and therefore bad). But birth control pills being responsible for pollution and mutation in fish? That’s news to us!
According to some activists, the increased levels of synthetic estrogen in waterways (which may be responsible for a rise in the numbers of intersex fish) might be caused by hormonal birth control. Specifically, women on hormonal birth control have synthetic estrogen in their pee — and when that pee gets flushed into the waterways, well… you see how it goes.
Not everyone is convinced that the pill is to blame for all of this. After all, synthetic estrogens are found in products other than birth control — plastics and hair straighteners, for example.
We’re not giving up our pills just yet, but we will be keeping an eye on this story as it develops.
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You kids need to get out more. The idea that the b.c. pill was polluting our waters with estrogen was a hot topic back in ‘96. I’m pretty sure it came up again in ‘00. It’s a pretty constant reaccurance.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:15 pmWell, to be fair, I was thirteen for most of 1996, so this issue wasn’t really on my radar.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:52 pmThat’s old news - I covered it in college way before you were in double figures (now I feel really old). But it does keep coming up as they bring more evidence to the table of the additional effects that the hormones can do. But it’s not just birth control - some plastic waste can mimic oestrogen and produce the same effect, such as bisphenol A, which has been round for about 100 years.
March 5th, 2008 at 3:56 pmI’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: tubal ligations win the eco award on every level. I was so thrilled to go off the pill when I got fixed a couple of years ago.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:05 pmYet another reason to get more types of IUD’s approved and available here in the states, as opposed to the one non-hormonal option which was around for my mom before me and isn’t an ideal size for most nulliparous women, where millions of women choose from many different kinds of IUD’s around the world as their form of non-hormonal birth control. I want my IUD!
March 6th, 2008 at 10:47 pmLeave a reply :