WP: Pollution Confusing Fish Hormone Systems

[MountainLaurel]

Male fish from the upper reaches of the Potomac River are producing a blood protein normally found only in females, scientists say, seeming to confirm fears that an unknown pollutant is confusing the fish's natural hormone systems.

This discovery, made by scientists at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, comes on the heels of the finding last year that male fish in the same area were producing eggs.

Those intersex fish have put the Potomac River's headwaters -- small streams in West Virginia farm country -- at the center of an emerging national pollution problem. Scientists say that some runoff from factories, farms and sewage plants contains chemicals that animals' bodies mistake for their own hormones, throwing off the natural signals that guide their development.

A recent experiment looked at smallmouth bass from the South Branch of the Potomac, the same species that previously had been found to be growing eggs there. Scientists were looking for another sign that something was wrong with the fish, to confirm that some male bass don't exhibit this strange trait naturally.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/06/AR2005080600903.html

Fish today, your infant son tomorrow . . .

:scared:

[donsu]

1. not just tomorrow - it's happening to humans now

why do you think there are fertility clinics on every corner.

if there was some way to gather and display the number of american babies that are born degraded from simple to lethal ways, people would faint at the amount.

[Boomer]

2. Intersex is such a taboo subject

I know male infertility has been on the rise for years (or is it decades), but do we know whether the number of intersex babies has risen?

Our culture is so freaked by the thought of intersexual individuals -- who do not have a clear cut gender indentification -- that I could believe no one wants to talk about this issue. But surely there must be medical records, right?

[donsu]

3. agree with you - I've tried to think how to gather this info but I would

have to know medical lingo to even search

[wli]

4. there's anecdotal evidence suggesting so, but I see no stats anywhere

This may very well be useful for attracting religious voters to environmental causes (a vomitous relationship, but it beats fascism).

[MountainLaurel]

5. One problem

I think, might be that birth records may not record this information in an easily collectible format (such as a birth certificate). Most of the data would be found deeper within individual medical records -- particularly in surgical interventions after birth.

Read a great article several years ago that discussed how pervasive the problem is and how emotionally fraught it usually is, discussing girls born with "overly large" clitorises (which in the male develop into penises) that were surgically removed in infancy at the surgeon's recommendation, and the lifetime of emotional and physical trauma that can cause. Children raised as female because they lacked a penis even though their hormonal systems were more male than anything else.

I have access to most medical journals at work; will do a search tomorrow to see if stats exist.

[donsu]

7. thank you for searching - this is a HUGE issue

nt

[Southpaw Bookworm]

6. Crikey!

I wonder if Rachel Carson would feel vindicated, were she alive today, about the genetic mess we've made of ourselves and of our environment, with our chemical world?