According to recent reports on the U.S. EPA Web site, studies have confirmed that female hormones are in such abundance in our rivers and streams that the aquatic life is being affected. They report a feminization of male fish found in the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom and Japan.

This is linked to the exposure to both natural and synthetic estrogens and chemicals that mimic estrogens in the water. According to this report, the majority of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals are believed to reach the aquatic environments via the effluent released into the streams and rivers by sewage treatment plants.

The same phenomenon was observed in England and both sites were said to be downstream from sewage treatment plants. Scientists have also discovered that male alligators are similarly affected in Lake Apopka, FL, and they also found many infertile male panthers.

I see a lot of this estrogen disposal indictment; more than any other pharmaceutical. I never agreed with the slant that we cause all of this damage with improper disposal, but every week I see another one of those articles about tranny fish or femme frogs. I think that it may be possible that we have just overcrowded our planet. Let me expand.

Joke alert: As far as the feminization of alligators in FL (Queer Eye For The Swamp Guy), that may be more of a factor of their terrestrial environment. I’ll bet that lake is really close to South Beach. I’ll leave the transgendered panther jokes for someone else to have fun here, but always look for an Adam’s apple. That helps.

I think that we have established (ad nauseum) by redundant research that most of these chemicals pass right through our wastewater treatment systems (and we are the only species that have wastewater treatment systems). One EPA report states that:

“If you throw your pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) down the drain or flush them down the toilet, and if your home is connected to a municipal sewage system, some of the PPCPs would typically be discharged into lakes, rivers, or oceans, because most waste water treatment plants are not designed to remove or destroy PPCPs from waste water.”

Most septic systems don’t destroy the PPCPs either. On the contrary, PPCPs may destroy the bacteria in the septic system that aid in breaking down the waste in the household waste water. These helpful bacteria are also a component used in sewage treatment plants to break down waste.

So let’s say we do all of this research and spend a ton of money to develop treatment schemes that can reduce end of pipe levels at the human sewage treatment plant. In the end, we’ve done about as much good as stifling a fart noise at a rock concert.

Look at the four nations cited most often; US, Japan, Europe and the UK. Notice that less populated countries like Canada don’t seem to ever show up. There were about three million people and 330,000 human pregnancies in Canada last year, 800,000 horses, 15 million head of cattle (3.7 million pregnant) and 25 million pigs.

With the exception of pigs, about 10 percent of U.S. populations across the board and with a slightly larger land mass to dump it on (Canadian pigs run at about 40 percent of U.S. population because Canadians like that Canadian bacon, I guess). Maybe the real problem is that we are just overcrowded and need some better family planning.

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