Something in the water is feminizing male fish. Are we next?

Yes, we are next. Except people are paying money for it to be done.

Metrofishual ... I love it!

Are we fish? Do we have fishlike biology? Then, no.

"That's fucking stupid." -Mr. Garrison

it's the begining of "Y the Last Man" people, eek!

If my dick falls off after eating some fish i'm gonna go postal...

this is outta control

This is why I don't drink municipal water. Penta! Penta! Penta!

Why else would there be so many gay guys roaming the streets?

it's obviously already way too late for us. most men hardly ever act like it anymore.

but I'm not really sure if it's men feminizing or women becoming more masculine. i think both.

Okay really? Males and females both have estrogen and testosterone. Obviously male having higher testosterone and females esrogen. Not so much anymore our testosterone levels or all whacked out. Which creates many health issues. Done a lot of reading on soy and the dangers of it, and that is one culprit......I think. Along with many other things of course. We are all one system, so if it is happening to fish of course it is happening to us. What we do to one thing effects everything in one shape or form. It seems lately I have been saying to myself frequently, "Are you serious? Didn't we already know this? Do they think their society is that ignorant?"

head line sounds like GB babble.

http://www.thestar.com/article/550470

It also is happening to other land animals such as otters, polar bears and turtles. Click on the link.

http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2005/8100/8100.html

It is already happening to us - the combination of oestrogens in drinking water and exposure to phthalates (both during gestation and after birth) which can be found in many plastic products is feminizing boys, as well as drastically reducing the number of viable sperms in semen.

Alarming! Producing immature female eggs...I wonder how that even happens?

so global warming is going to affect my balls to?
Great.

Oh nooo! My beloved ocean!

It is well documented that when species get over populated a gene is produced that raises the natural numbers of homosexuality in the species a natural phenomena that keeps populations in check. Maybe something is happening in our environment that is changing genes in many species.

Water pollution is a big problem for all species and needs attention desperately.

With all the technology available today, I'm sure they can find out the answer as to why this is happening. Can we trust them to take action, once they know?

Money talks loudly in America. Many times much louder than facts. Facts be damned, when the right lobbyists are put into action. Mainstream midia is complacent, due to money talking loudly to them also.

I 'hope' our EPA takes action and 'speaks' for us.

Did anyone read "The Midwifes Tale" ? It was a future in which most men were sterile and most women . Something like this could be brought about , only worse , it is happening with all species .

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08kristof.html?_r=1

Nick Kristof has been talking about this problem for some time now. I believe this is the most recent article about chemicals in our bodies. It hits close to home because my father had to go through treatment (and surgery) for prostate cancer due to high BPA levels.

Oh, so thaaat's why all the boys have girl haircuts and tight jeans!

I sure hope there's nothing in the water to make human males into a female gender. When I tell some overbearing, offensive fool to go fuck themself, I intend it as their mission impossible, and not as an exercise in unisex.

There are some hypothesis that claims the male humans will eventually disappear because the Y chromosome that dictates whether the fetus is male or female is getting smaller and smaller. I forgot how far they tracked the Y chromosome but when it is compared to today, it is a lot smaller than the males in the past.

I could be totally wrong about it. But, these are some hypothesis that are floating around.

02,
You can't be "Caesar of the World" because I will one day be the "Queen of the World".
Of course, if you're nice, I may share some of the power I will have, with you. :))

lol plastic surgeons must be relocating th the Atlantic...

any way, this problem is caused by global warming... a problem that needs fixing...

OK, I'm now a believer.

What do I have to do to keep from ovulating? I'm a bit too old to learn how to play on that team.

Do I need to update my "birds and bees" talk for my kids or grandkids?

OK...I have a problem with this statement in the article:
"The prime suspect? Our toilets. Previous research indicates that wastewater treatment plants flush endocrine-disruptive compounds (EDCs), including pharmaceuticals, pesticides and hormones, into rivers. "

It is only come to light in the last couple of years the endocrine disrupters have been identified as a major problem in our water systems.
Many endocrine disrupters cannot be removed by conventional ways. Even ultra-violet treatment cannot remove most of them. Many potable water treatment plants use this method, but it is not very effective against endocrine disrupters. There are engineers and scientists within the field of wastewater that are working on this, but so far there has been no definitive answer. These are synthetic drugs, and as such, are much more harmful and harder to remove than natually occuring substances.

It has been known that growth hormones given to milk cows also cause young boys to have breasts, but no one is doing anything about it because there is so much MONEY at stake with the likes of Monsanto, who produces the stuff, and the dairy farmers who feel they have to use it in order to compete.

OK...I'm off my "high-horse" now.:))

and you wonder why i have gone to rain water... for all my drinking water... i even bring water from home to the office now... and even our air is not clean...

next?... hmmmm ...... isnt this already happening to humans?

that's fairly disturbing.

A very alarming development . Could be drugs people take (estrogen birth control and menopause) , could be plastic synthetic female hormones or pesticides runoff . likely both . The homophobes are gonna have to get over it . That is one way to decrease the human population . Of everything . Hormones also have an effect on other aspects of health in humans , like heart disease and cancer .

Given that intersex fish were found both upstream and downstream of wastewater treatment plants, some scientists also think agricultural runoff could be the cause. Another USGS biologist, Vicki S. Blazer, has found 100 percent of smallmouth bass to be intersex along parts of the Shenandoah River, where rain washes waste laden with hormones excreted from millions of chickens and cattle into the water. Blazer worries that there’s a connection between the intersex findings and another health crisis among bass: weakened immune systems, suspected of killing 80 percent of the smallmouth bass in the Shenandoah in 2004 and 2005. She notes that the white blood cells that fight disease in the piscine immune system have receptors for hormones, making them susceptible to the same toxins believed to be driving the sex changes. “Intersex is simply another indicator that there’s a problem,” she says.

Hinck is now investigating the mechanisms that could be transforming the fish, but we’re just beginning to learn what this means for those of us with opposable thumbs, many of whom drink water from these rivers. The same compounds can interfere with the human endocrine system, but there are no regulations for controlling hormones in drinking water.

In September, for the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency identified nine hormones as possible contaminants in our water, but it’s much too early for the agency to declare whether they’re dangerous at the trace amounts that have been detected. Mae Wu of the Natural Resources Defense Council is not comforted. “A trace level of one chemical [might not be so bad], but a whole soup of them?” she says. “Hundreds or thousands of different chemicals all at trace levels—we have no idea what that does to humans.” At the very least, we can hope that the thought of drinking water that turns male fish into females will spur us to clean up our rivers.

The nine-year study, conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, provides the first nationwide count of intersex fish in American rivers. Overall, 44 percent of the largemouth and smallmouth bass dissected turned out to be intersex, but at some sites 91 percent of the male largemouth bass were affected. Biologist Jo Ellen Hinck’s team found intersex males at 34 of 111 sites in eight of nine major river basins, including the Columbia, the Colorado and the Mississippi. The Southeastern U.S. was hit hardest, with intersex bass at every location sampled along the Apalachicola, Savannah and Pee Dee rivers. “Now we need to figure out why,” says Hinck, the study’s leader.

The discovery raises some tough questions. Scientists don’t know whether the growing number of feminized fish could hinder reproduction enough to disturb the rest of the ecosystem or even drive bass into extinction. Even scarier, the culprit is still unknown. The prime suspect? Our toilets. Previous research indicates that wastewater treatment plants flush endocrine-disruptive compounds (EDCs), including pharmaceuticals, pesticides and hormones, into rivers. Even minuscule amounts of EDCs can trigger powerful hormonal shifts that deform male fishes’ reproductive organs. During a seven-year study, for instance, scientists added parts-per-trillion amounts—the levels emitted by treatment plants—of the synthetic estrogen used in birth-control pills to a closed lake. The resulting sex changes collapsed the entire fish population.