A Call to Ban Ethinyl Estradiol and Fracking

It is hard to be an environmentalist these days.

Evidently synthetic hormones from contraceptive pills have found their way into rivers, streams and drinking supplies in the UK and have been linked to collapsing fish populations. Ethinyl estradiol (EE2) can trigger a condition known as intersex in fresh water fish. That is male fish showing female traits such as egg production. Clearly this is bad for the continuation of a species. So bad in fact that Tom Worstall, a contributor at Forbes magazine asks if women on contraceptive pills should pay an additional $1500 dollars annually to help pay for the clean up.

Seems only fair that the polluter should pay for the clean up.

But there is more.

In November of 2009 an article in Popular Mechanics noted the intersexing trend in the United States bass population and wondered if humans might be next?

The query turned prescient when researchers at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto found a strong correlation between estrogen use in women, i.e. birth control and the incidence of prostate cancer in men. (You can find the published data here.) This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone as EE2 is the ultimate endocrine disruptor.

I make a big deal of this for one reason.

I have been following the natural gas debate for well over a year as New York has refused time and again landowners rights to use private property as they see fit. While the arguments have vacillated over time, the central tenet always comes back to water quality and public health. Much has been made by TEDX ,
and others that too little is know about the chemical make up of fracking fluid. That there is surely a group of endocrine disruptors that will lie in wait to cause some as yet undefined public health disaster.

All this while oral contraceptives are contaminating water supplies, destroying fish populations and causing prostate cancer in men right now. And yet, we hear not a peep from anyone who bases their opposition to hydraulic fracturing on water quality or public safety.

Now why is that, do you think?

I have never been one for the preachings of Saul Alinsky, but rule number 4 seems to offer a great deal here.

“The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

With that in mind, I hereby call on Dr. Theo Colborn, Josh Fox, Citizens for Water, Water Defense, Mark Ruffalo, Frack Off, Sandra Steingraber, Chip Northrup, and others to join in common voice to call for the immediate ban of oral contraception by women.

The purity of our water, the health of our fish population and the lives of men around the country and world are at stake.

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