So what I don't understand is how people can be so concerned with the chemicals and hormones they're putting into their bodies through food, and yet they don't give a second thought to the effects of pumping artificial hormones into their systems through birth control pills.
I wrote about it earlier this year and talked a bit about the harmful side effects that many women accept without a second thought. They include increased risks of heart and blood abnormalities, breast cancer (a Swedish study found it was 5x higher in women who used the pill and that they tend to get it at a younger age), cervical cancer and cervical dysplasia, along with higher occurrences of other types of cancers. And that doesn't even get into less life threatening side effects, which include (but aren't limited to) depression, temporary or permanent blindness and temporary or permanent infertility.
Now if life threatening side effects aren't enough to stop you putting artificial hormones into your body you may want to take a look at its effect on the environment. Birth control pills hurt the environment too! And the news isn't new. Most of the studies I found were at least five years old and showed the serious effects that birth control pills are having on fish.
Take a look at this:
"According to the National Catholic Register, EPA-funded scientists at the University of Colorado studied fish in a mountain stream near Boulder, Colo., two years ago.And then there's this:
When they netted 123 trout and other fish downstream from the city's sewer plant, they found 101 were female, 12 were male, and 10 were strange "intersex" fish with male and female features.
It's "the first thing that I've seen as a scientist that really scared me," university biologist John Woodling told the Denver Post.
The main culprits were found to be estrogens and other steroid hormones from birth-control pills and patches that ultimately ended up in the creek after being excreted in urine into the city's sewers.
The Register says Woodling, University of Colorado physiology professor David Norris, and the EPA team were among the first scientists in the U.S. to learn a cocktail of hormones, antibiotics, caffeine and steroids is flowing through the nation's waterways, threatening fish and contaminating drinking water.
"Nobody is getting passionately concerned about it," Norris said. "It makes no sense to me at all that people aren't more concerned."
The problem is not just limited to Boulder. Similar stories have been reported from coast to coast.
In western Washington, experts found synthetic estrogen – commonly found in oral contraceptives – drastically reduces the fertility of male rainbow trout.
Doug Myers, wetlands and habitat specialist for Washington State's Puget Sound Action Team, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that in frogs, river otters and fish, scientists are "finding the presence of female hormones making the male species less male.""
"For three years, Canadian scientists have put birth-control pills into a remote Ontario lake to measure this impact. The results: All male fish in the lake - from tiny tadpoles to large trout - were "feminized," meaning they had egg proteins growing abnormally in their bodies.And it even effects cows.
The experiment was intended to match the impact that the female hormone estrogen may be having on many American bodies of water, as city sewage systems empty waste into them that is contaminated with residue from birth-control pills.
One-third of male Pearl Dace minnows grew eggs in their testes. The entire population of the common Fathead minnow, once numbering in the several thousands, crashed to near zero because the hormone-stoked fish couldn't reproduce."
I think that we don't hear about this issue because it would be inconvenient for all the hyper-feminists who are obsessed with controlling every aspect of their sexuality. They don't seem to understand that controlling nature has repercussions.
Or maybe this is the true litmus test for all the self proclaimed environmentalists out there. Can a person really call themselves an environmentalist when they're pumping poison into the environment on a daily basis? Just a thought.
And one last note: for women who use birth control pills for health reasons I would strongly suggest talking to a knowledgeable doctor about using NFP charting to determine underlying problems for the causes behind problems with reproductive systems. Google NFP, check out the Couple to Couple League or click on the NFP label on the right side of my page for more info.