Male Fish In Colorado Developing Female Reproductive Organs

BOULDER, Colo. - Researchers in Colorado have made a startling discovery. Fish, apparently male, are developing female sexual organs. Scientists believe it's the result of too much estrogen in the water and they're finding estrogen in rivers across the country.

In Colorado's rivers and streams, scientists are waist-deep in ritual of the season, using electric currents to stun native fish to the surface where they're measured and checked. But what they discovered in the white sucker fish has got even veteran scientists concerned. "I've done a lot of studies throughout my career which extends back to 1973," says research associate John Woodling. “This is the very first time that what I've found scared me."

"This fish has characteristics of both male and female," says Dr. David O. Norris of the University of Colorado, Boulder.

And scientists have found lots of them in three Colorado rivers, all of them downstream from sewage treatment plants. In the Boulder Creek, female white suckers outnumbered males five to one and 50 percent of the males also had female sex tissue. Researchers say the cause is too much estrogen in the water, a natural female hormone that is found in every sewer system. But also, they say, certain chemical compounds in detergents and soaps can mimic estrogen. Barbara Biggs, of Denver's largest sewage plant, says most of the nation's sewage plants simply can't remove all the estrogen in the water."

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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6436617/

"We're concerned about the effect on aquatic life, but we're also concerned about our ability to actually treat for these estrogens and estrogen mimickers," says Biggs.

Estrogen mimickers are believed to be caused by chemicals called nonylphenols, found in everything from paints and rubber to cosmetics and plastics. They are considered a possible cause of kidney, eye, liver and reproductive problems.

They’ve been banned in much of Europe and are under review in Canada, but are still common in America, where they are flowing out of sewage plants and into clean water flowing into America's rivers.

themselves.

we women are flushing estrogen down the toilet each time we pee, which makes its way down these streams and causes the dual sex organs.

He says that soon, women will be banned from going to the bathroom.

:eyes:

Male bass producing egggs on the South Branch of the Potomac River.

Wonder how soon it'll be until all these pollutants we're ingesting cause human males to start growing female reproductive organs?

I mentioned this research (which has been published in several newspapers over the last few months) to some of my co-workers and one them remarked how over the last year or so every pregnancy among members of his local church had ended in the birth of a girl. He had a son -- but through adoption. The subject had been the cause of much joking, but after hearing about the skewed sex ratio among these fish populations, he wasn't laughing so hard anymore.

Genetically, maybe some of them are, in fact, XY but with feminized external sexual organs.

Atlant