Daily Mail Report, Monday March 18th 2002
“The fertility of a generation of men is being put at risk because a hormone found in the Pill is getting into drinking water, scientists fear.
Pollution due to the chemical, a powerful form of oestrogen, is causing up to half the male fish in our low land rivers to change sex, research shows.
Experts believe the hormone could be getting into drinking water and effecting men’s sperm counts. They say sewage treatments does not remove the chemical entirely from drinking supplies, although the water industry insists there is no evidence of risk to health.
A study to be published by the Environment Agency later this month says entire fish stocks in some stretches of water are irreversibly affected. Scientists believe the synthetic oestrogen can feminize fish at levels as low as one part per billion.
Professor Charles Tyler, one of the leaders of the research, told BBC1’s Countryfile: ‘Some of the concentrations where we are seeing effects on fish are below the detection limit in place for testing our drinking water. So we can not be sure that some of these compounds aren’t getting into our drinking water.’
The study on roach stocks from ten rivers found nearly half of male fish had eggs in their testes or female reproductive ducts. A tenth were sterile and another quarter had damaged sperm.
Dr Susan Jobling, from the research team said: ‘There are very real reasons to be worried about whether male reproductive health could also be affected.”
Commentary by Geoffrey Lean:
The discovery that half the male fish in Britain’s rivers are changing sex and that the hormone responsible may be getting into drinking water is just the latest example of how nature can give us nasty surprises.
For, despite our frequent boast that we have conquered the natural world, it has a habit of striking back in ways we least expect.
Millions of women have found the Pill to be a blessing and, although it might pose some health risks, no one expected it to cause an environmental crisis. On the contrary, it promised to avert catastrophe by helping to slow population growth.
But now scientists have found that ethanol oestradiol – a chemical used in the Pill which is between 50 – 100 times more powerful than natural oestrogens – is responsible for feminizing fish.
Excreted in women’s urine and passing through sewage works, it is causing the fish to develop eggs in their testes and, in some cases, creating female reproductive ducts.
Although scientists do not yet know whether this is affecting people, we do know that one-third of our drinking water comes from rivers – most of it from stretches situated below sewage works. And we also know that sperm counts have been dropping alarmingly.
One study by the medical Research Council found that Scottish men born since 1970 are 25 per cent less fertile than those born 20 years earlier – and that fertility is continuing to drop by two per cent a year.
Of course, other chemicals may be responsible, for we are increasingly discovering that we are surrounded by ‘gender-bending’ substances. Many pesticides and plastics, for example, contain chemicals that disrupt the hormone system. They have also been widely found in food and drink, including in baby milk formula.
These developments underline three lessons we must learn about nature. First, it is far too complex for us to predict how it will react to changes brought about by man. Second, it gives little away for free – and if we make heavy demands, it exacts a high price. And last, it has no reset button: we cannot quickly put things back the way they were before, if at all.
The world has been trying to drum these lessons into us since the dawn of civilization. The oldest known written story, the epic of Gilgamesh, warns against cutting down the cedar forests of Mesopotamia. But the moral was disregarded and what was once the city of Uruk is now just a bump in the sand of resulting desert.
Over the generations we have learnt – usually the hard way – that wanton environmental damage causes disaster. But nature is now also teaching us that well-meaning actions can have nasty consequences if not enough care is taken.”
End
Recent reports in the press at large are showing the dangers of too much oestrogen in our environment and the effect it is having on us. Most articles say that the experts are not sure what is causing the rise in women’s diseases such as breast cancer, cervical cancer, fibroids, endometriosis, early puberty, osteoporosis, PMS and menopause, yet other experts are saying that all these can be linked to a syndrome known as oestrogen dominance. Natural progesterone can counter the balance of too much oestrogen and does this naturally when we produce our own. This makes a great deal of sense as to why many women feel so well when they supplement with natural progesterone which naturally balances the harmful effects of too much oestrogen.