Our Birth Control Undermines Amphibians

...It's not easy being green.

rubbers don't hurt the widdle froggies !

Frogs aren't the only animals being affected by drugs that are flushed back into the streams. So are we and there are indications that some of the problems children are having are due to these drugs being drunk by them all the time. There are ways to neutralize these chemicals before they wind up in the water supply but no one wants to pay for them. Of course industry doesn't want anything done because it would make the tracing of the illegal dumping of chemicals easier when they are the only ones putting toxins into the water supplies.

Frogs and other amphibians are always the first to show the effects of chemical poisoning in the environment because their skins are so moist and porous that everything just soaks right into them. What it does to them is always an indicator of what will happen later on when it also starts getting into larger organisms further up the food chain as well.

I saw something similar on "Sightings" in the early 90s. Apparently even back then frogs were being born with 8 legs and 4 eyes, or being born with no legs and no eyes. We are pumping so many more chemicals and hormones into our streams besides estrogen. In tests on water supplies they have found growth hormones, caffeine, antibiotics, and manmade compounds with names too long to list.

All the stuff we're expelling into our environment must have something to do with the huge instances of disorders our children are being born with, from learning disabilities to asthma to rare genetic disorders.

It's not just estrogen that is being passed into our water supply. Many pharmaceuticals, having failed to be fully absorbed by our bodies, pass into waste water via urine. This is not new news either but nobody has cared for years. I would also like to add that soaps being formulated as antibacterial may pose and even bigger threat to our waterways as they are washed down the drain.

You mean in in our Beer too? That explains alot...

Frogs are a great indicator of the health of our environment. And, estrogens are just one issue. Farm chemicals, fertilizers, plastics, phosphates, petroleum products are all causing damage at cellular levels to animals and humans.

It isn't just the frogs. Check out the research on the feminization of male fish in many of the US and Europe's rivers and lakes. The feminization of fish has been directly linked to hormones finding their way into the waterways -- a significant source of the hormone infiltration has been shown to be chemical contraceptives.

Lesfibians!

So the moral of the story is: Men, don't drink the water! If it messed up the male frogs what will it do to you?

So does this mean if I drink a glass of water my gonads will shrink or my sperm count will go down?

Then the problem is our third world sanitation system. Waste water should never ever enter the environment or re-enter the domestic water supply without filtering out everything that has known negative effects. It is pretty gross anyway, that we drink everyone's drugs, and much worse, and still be considered 'clean'.

I am not a "tree hugger" type by any means. We do try to be mindful of huge, obvious toxicities in the environment and avoid them, but we don't live in a green bubble, either. I am the mother of two young children. One child has a syndrome that nobody else in either side of the family has. The other doesn't have that syndrome, but has a heart defect that will require surgery in a few years and has major respiratory issues (again, no family history of either issue). I did not drink alcohol, smoke, drink caffeiene, or take any medications while pregnant. We socialize a lot with other families with young children in various settings and in two different metro areas in different parts of the US. I can literally count on one hand how many families do NOT have kids with medical issues. When I was growing up in the 70's, I could count on one hand how many families DID have kids with big medical problems. And I'm not talking about kids who were born majorly premature or with other risk factors. I'm talking about pregnancies/births/environments that *should* have resulted in healthy babies.
As much as I would love to be able to join in with the crowd that refuses to admit that humans are poisoning the environment, I am just no longer able to believe that. Our food supply and what we breathe has to be contributing. It makes no sense that humans lived for all these thousands of years without all the problems we have now and then all of a sudden all hell broke loose and we and the industrial revolution had nothing to do with it. We know that we are using thousands of chemicals every day, many of which are man-made or manipulated. If you get too far from what nature gave you, and you start seeing radical changes in the health of the living beings that are impacted by the new chemicals around them, it just makes sense to suspect that the new additions are probably the problem.

Its another chemical we need to filter at our water treatment plants, then.

all water that leaves toilets/sinks should go to treatment facilities where everything is removed ...stop dumping into rivers and streams..idiots

Technology has unintended consequences? I never would have guessed. I wonder what the effects are on humans.

We need to counter balance this, FREE Viagra for all, even the frogs. Write the president.

girls, no more peeing in the wild if we want more tadpoles.

so the song "froggy came a courting" will die out