OT - Hormones in Water Supply

[Guest guest]

This was posted on of all things my Photoshop group. There were no credits

or source, but I thought it was interesting. There is a lot of British

members on that list.

 

Patty Corapi

 

Doctors in Britain are reporting a bizarre rise in the amount of

men seeking breast reduction surgery. Over the course of the last

year, the number of such procedures performed at English clinics

has doubled. According to a recent article in London's Sunday

Times, one central city surgeon says that in the last four years

he's gone from doing one breast reduction a month to doing one

per week. Other physicians are reporting similar increases.

Analysis of the tissues being removed during these operations

shows that they are not simple fatty tissues created by excessive

weight gain, but are instead actual human breast tissue

structurally similar to the tissues found in female breasts. This

condition is called gynecomastia. Experts theorize that it's

likely being caused by traces of contraceptive pills in public

water supplies and by the hormones used by farmers to promote

growth in livestock.

 

Male fish caught in the West Virginia headwaters of the Potomac

River are producing a protein in their blood normally only found

in the females of their species. Scientists at the Virginia

Institute of Marine Science examined smallmouth bass and found

that they were making vitellogenin, a protein manufactured in the

livers of female bass to create the egg yolk that feeds

developing embryos. Though male smallmouth bass contain the gene

for making vitellogenin, they lack the female hormones that turn

this gene " on " and trigger the protein's production. Scientists

conducting the study said it appeared that the male fish were

being exposed to something in the water that was behaving like

female estrogens, the family of potent reproductive hormones

responsible for vitellogenin production among many other things.

While the study couldn't pinpoint exactly what that pollutant

might be, researchers theorize that nearby factory-style chicken

farms and sewage plants are to blame. Both operations create

tremendous quantities of waste laced with synthetic estrogens.

More mysterious still is what caused scientists to investigate

this rather obscure protein conundrum in the first place. The

study occurred because male fish in the same region were found

last year to be making more than