Environmental Impacts of Hormonal Birth Control

From HLI:

The serious physical side effects inflicted upon women by the Pill, the patch, injectables, implants, and hormone-loaded IUDs are often noted.  But the effects of birth control extend far beyond the boundaries of women’s bodies.

Environmentalists tell us that our ecosystem depends upon an extremely delicate balance of a large number of factors, and that even the most apparently insignificant activities of man are enough to have major impacts upon it.  Yet they are dead silent on the ecological effects of some of the most powerful chemicals on earth. In 2002, the United Kingdom’s Environmental Agency stated, “Estrogenic steroids―natural and synthetic hormones in sewage effluent―have been shown to be more potent than previously thought, with the synthetic steroid 17a ethinyl estradiol showing effects in fish at concentrations below 1 nanogram per liter.”[2]

In other words, a single drop of one of these steroids pollutes 220,000 gallons of water severely enough to cause significant health problems in fish.[3]  This is equivalent to three drops in a standard Olympic-sized swimming pool of 660,000 gallons or 88,000 cubic feet of water.  A single thimbleful would have major impacts on fish living in a lake 300 yards in diameter. This is because excreted birth control pill hormones are a pollutant, just like DDT or PCBs.  Gord Miller, Ontario’s environmental commissioner, said, “If you were designing the perfect pollutant, it would probably look like a pill.”[4]

Estrogens which are excreted into the environment are classed as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) because they interfere with the endocrine systems of both humans and animals.  Other EDCs, such as those that find their way into the environment from vehicle exhaust, paints, plastics and adhesives, can be filtered out in waste water treatment plants, but estrogen-based EDCs cannot, and thus pose a greater threat.[5]

The top environmental agencies in the United States, Canada and England have all found that exposure to unmetabolized birth control hormones has caused feminization of male fish, delayed reproduction in female fish, and damaged the kidneys and livers of fish of both sexes.[4]  Studies have found that female fish outnumber male fish in streams by a ratio of ten to one in areas where there is a high incidence of birth control pill usage.  Biologist John Wooding said about this finding, “It’s the first thing that I’ve seen as a scientist that really scared me.”[6] (Read more.)

Share