July 15-21, 2007 Issue |
Posted 7/10/07 at 1:25 PM
BOULDER, Colo. — When EPA-funded scientists at the
University of Colorado studied fish in a pristine mountain stream known as
Boulder Creek two years ago, they were shocked. Randomly netting 123 trout and
other fish downstream from the city’s sewer plant, they found that 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,” said then 59-year-old University of Colorado biologist John
Woodling, speaking to the Denver Post in 2005.
They studied the fish and decided the main culprits were
estrogens and other steroid hormones from birth control pills and patches,
excreted in urine into the city’s sewage system and then into the creek.
Woodling, University of Colorado physiology professor David
Norris, and their EPA-study team were among the first scientists in the country
to learn that a slurry of hormones, antibiotics, caffeine and steroids is
coursing down the nation’s waterways, threatening fish and contaminating
drinking water.
Since their findings, stories have been emerging everywhere.
Scientists in western Washington found that synthetic estrogen — a common
ingredient 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.”
This summer, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the
American Pharmacists Association will begin a major public awareness campaign
regarding contamination that’s resulting from soaps and pharmaceuticals,
including birth control.
What the Boulder scientists discovered, however, is that few
people care.
Or, if they’re worried, they’re in denial.
“Nobody is getting passionately concerned about it,” Norris
said. “It makes no sense to me at all that people aren’t more concerned.”
When the story of his finding hit Denver and Boulder
newspapers, Norris anticipated an immediate response from environmentalists,
who define the politics of Boulder and are known to picket in the streets
demanding ends to questionable farming practices, global warming and pesticide
treatments.
To the professor’s surprise, however, the hormone story was
mostly ignored.
Two years later, environmental groups have failed to take up
the cause of saving Boulder Creek and its fish from hormone pollution.
Dave Georgis, who directs the Colorado Genetic Engineering
Action Network, took to the streets of Boulder on several occasions to hold
signs demanding that Boulder County regulate genetically modified crops from
existence.
When asked about the genetically modified fish and the
contaminated drinking water, however, he said: “It just has so much competition
out there for stuff to work on.”
He told the Boulder Weekly that nobody needed to consider
curtailing use of artificial contraceptives out of concern for the creek.
“You can’t have a zero impact, and this is one of the many,
many impacts we have on the environment in everyday life,” Georgis said.
“Nobody is to blame for this, and I don’t have a solution.”
Norris, an environmentalist and birth-control advocate, said
that until society achieves better sewage filtration and invents harmless
contraceptives, “there’s always abstinence, and we know that it’s 100%
effective.”
To preserve the self-giving nature of the sexual act, which
must always be open to life, the Catechism teaches that it is wrong to use
contraception. Couples may space their children for just reasons in ways using
natural family planning, which involves observation of signs in the woman’s
body.
Says the Catechism: “The regulation of births represents one
of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions
on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means
(for example, direct sterilization or contraception)” (No. 2399).
But Catholics shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for
environmentalists to advocate a boycott of contraceptives, said George Harden,
a board member of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, based in
Steubenville, Ohio.
“If you’re killing mosquitoes to save people from the West
Nile virus, you can count on secular environmentalists to lay down in front of
the vapor truck, claiming some potential side effect that might result from the
spray,” Harden said. “But if birth control deforms fish — backed by the proof
of an EPA study — and threatens the drinking supply, mum will be the word.”
Harden said the growing knowledge of estrogen-polluted water
may expose the cultural double-standards that protect birth control from the
scrutiny given to other chemicals and drugs.
“It’s going to start looking funny,” Harden said. “The
radical environmentalist won’t eat a corn chip if the corn contacted a
pesticide. But they view it a sacred right and obligation to consume synthetic
chemicals that alter a woman’s natural biological functions, even if this
practice threatens innocent aquatic life downstream.”
Despite growing and nationwide knowledge of birth control
pollution in rivers and streams, leading environmentalists remain unfazed —
even in Boulder, where it’s been known about for years.
Curt Cunningham, water quality issues chairman for the Rocky
Mountain Chapter of Sierra Club International, worked tirelessly last year on a
ballot measure that would force the City of Boulder to remove fluoride from
drinking water, because some believe it has negative effects on health and the
environment that outweigh its benefits. But Cunningham said he would never
consider asking women to curtail use of birth control pills and patches —
despite what effect these synthetics have on rivers, streams and drinking
water.
“I suspect people would not take kindly to that,” Cunningham
said. “For many people it’s an economic necessity. It’s also a personal freedom
issue.”
As nonviolence coordinator for the Rocky Mountain Peace and
Justice Center, Betty Ball has taken to the streets with signs in protest of
genetically modified crops. She lobbies Boulder’s city and county officials to
stop spraying mosquitoes in their effort to fight the deadly West Nile virus —
a disease that killed seven Boulder residents and caused permanent disabilities
in others during the summer of 2004.
“Right now we’re worried about weed control chemicals and
pesticides,” said Ball, when asked whether her organization would address the
hormone problem in Boulder Creek. “The water contamination is a problem, but we
don’t have the time and resources to address it right now.”
Norris said hormones have been detected in municipal water
supplies, but he said the jury’s out on the long-term effects the chemicals
might have on humans and human sexuality.
Research by New Jersey health officials and Rutgers
University scientists found traces of birth control hormones and other
prescription drugs and preservatives in municipal tap water throughout the
state in 2003, and they don’t know the effects long-term exposure may have.
“The question is, ‘Is this something the body deals with at
low levels, metabolizes and there’s no problem? Or is this something that
accumulates in the body?’ We just don’t know,” said Brian Buckley, the Rutgers
chemist who led the four-year drinking water study, in North Jersey News. “To
be honest, we are just starting to deal with the question.”
Rebecca Goldburg, a New Jersey biologist working with
Environmental Defense, told the North Jersey News: “I’m not sure I want even
low levels of birth control pills in my daughter’s drinking water.”
Ball said she’s alarmed by the sex-altered fish in Boulder
Creek, and worries about the ramifications for humans.
“Unfortunately, it is emerging as a major issue in creeks
and waterways all over the earth, and we’re seeing more and more anomalies, not
just with fish but with frogs and other aquatic life. I think it’s a precursor
to what will happen to humans who drink contaminated water,” Ball said.
Ball said she’s shocked that citizens of Boulder haven’t
organized and taken to the streets, as many Colorado environmentalists did upon
learning that farmers and agri-businesses were genetically altering crops. She
said the major source of contamination that’s mutating Boulder Creek fish —
birth control — makes it a political hot potato.
To avoid genetically modified crops, Ball said, one needed
only to buy organic, genetically modified organism-free products at health food
stores. Asking residents to stop polluting water with hormones, however, “gets
into the bedroom.”
“I’m not going there,” Ball said. “This involves people’s
personal lives, child bearing issues, sex lives and personal choices. Maybe
people are saying, ‘O my God, what do we do about this?’
“Apathy is the fear of sticking your toe in, for fear it
will change your life. Sometimes positive change does require a change in
lifestyle.”
Wayne Laugesen
writes from Boulder, Colorado.
Media Takes Notice
“Chemicals in the
contraceptive pill and other products are altering the reproductive processes
of fish.”
— Metro UK, March 2007
“Many streams, rivers and lakes already bear warning signs
that the fish caught within them may also be carrying enough chemicals that
mimic the female hormone estrogen to cause breast cancer cells to grow.”
— Scientific American,
April, 2007
“In the Potomac
River, male smallmouth bass are sprouting eggs, and scientists blame pollution
and the Pill.”
— Stanford Daily, July
5, 2007
CNS photo by Mike Crupi, Catholic Courie
Advertisement
Advertisement
Make a Donation now!
Insightful. Informative. Uncompromisingly faithful. The National Catholic Register is more than a newspaper. It’s a cause. Your support for the Register funds important journalism that helps to build a Culture of Life in our nation, and throughout the world. Help us promote the Church’s New Evangelization by donating to the National Catholic Register right now.
.
