Recently a few new stories have been coming out talking about estrogen and endorcine edisruptors affects in the environment. Here is a link to a National Geographic article http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/11/1103_041103_potomac_fish.html

Studying Endorcine disruptors is a relatively new field in analytical chemistry. As more work is being done we are finding more compounds that interefere with hormone systems. These include obvious estrogen mimickers like persciprtion birth control and menopause drugs. It also includes many organic compounds such as PCB's, pthalates and some herbicides and pesticides. Some metal complexes have also been found to screw with sex hormones. The scary thing about this is it can take extremely small amounts of these endorcine disruptors to cause problems in sensitive organisms.

Many of these compounds have been known to be toxic for quite some time. Until recently pthalates were thought to be fairly benign. Pthalates are found extensively in our world. There are used as plasticisers and are found in a wide variety of household products.

This is a new frontier in environmental chemistry. One that is being closely watched as a new treatment plant is built between and Snohomish counties and as more pressures are applied to local utilities.

Steve

as Ahhnold would say
"girly fish"

weird deal for for sure
makes ya wonder what else is mutating

Although Mr. Schwartzenegger has made the moniker "girly men" a widely recognizable sound byte, you guys should know it is a very real medical condition... and it even goes both ways. And no I am not talking about people who have taken hormones or resorted to surgery to change their outward sexual features.

Some people are girls on the outside with testicles on the inside. Some are male on the outside (albeit girly-looking men) with ovaries on the inside. Doesn't surprise me at all that the same thing happens to fish. There are a number of species where all the individuals start out life as males and only the largest in the school/colony transform into females.

Damn, Doc, I trying to eat breakfast, man!

I've been doing some research on this for an article-- spawned, incidentally, by the bass on the Potomac. The feminization of fish is widespread-- it's a big deal in the Sea of Japan and in a number of different areas in this country.

Heck, we even have that problem on the upriver bright run in the Hanford Reach, although there it's thought to be because of warmwater discharges from the reactors (and not radioactivity).

Other culprits are feedlots and commercial meat farms--chicken, pigs and beef primarily; it's enough to make you turn vegetarian.

A question I'd like to find an answer to is whether humans ingesting these girly critters (including meat-farm animals) are able to burn the hormones or whether they in turn affect the person.

Maybe that's why I've been attracted to cerise jigs lately...

Keith

Originally posted by fHp:
There's a draftman here in our office that is living proof!

Hey Keith,

There is widespread proof of ingested hormones from feed-lot meat/poultry causing a number of human maladies, not the least of which is rampant obesity and premature menarche in young women (FYI, menarche is when they officially become capable of reproduction). Believe it or not, the national average is now 11 yrs old in this country.

It is postulated that estrogen-laced chicken consumption has a lot to do with that. Commercial chicken farms load these birds with ungodly amounts of estrogen to accelerate their growth. I guess that's the price of "progress".

That explains my man-boobs.

So, we either get tits from estrogen laced chicken, or we get heart disease from beef.

Now I AM getting depressed... can't eat chicken, can't eat beef, probably shouldn't eat fish either from mercury or estrogen reasons... that leaves vegetables, and it also means that some of the hippies in Port Townsend are right!

Maybe that means I'll have to follow the lead of that character from the Simpsons who said he "doesn't eat anything that leaves a shadow."

However, perhaps if Alaskan fish are less contaminated than the fish around here, maybe I'll need to fish in Alaska more often to keep on top of the protein supply... hey, I can live with that.

Keith

YA Sol, no matter how you look at it (your going down). From the Doc's info it looks like I'll start chicken farming in the morning.

Related issue

http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=019747

So if any of you guys are taking estrogen or are on birth control pills, quit pissin in the River!

Hey, FNP-- Can you lead me toward any source for such info-- preferably something a lay person could understand? I'd appreciate it.

As for messing around with the reproductive cycle-- that seems scary. I can see growth hormones leading to obesity-- but decreasing the age of fertility seems seems even scarier to me.

Thanks,

Keith

Keith

There was a cover story in TIME a few months back (spring?) when I was gawking at the stats on how the national average age of menarche has steadily decreased over the past few decades. Actually I believe the quoted figure was 10.8 yrs... I rounded up to 11 for simplicity.

Imagine that! Half the 11 yr olds in this country are capable of having babies. As a father of four daughters, that really got my attention, especially since one is 12 and the oldest is 14.

In another article it talked about precocious puberty.... 8 and 9 year old girls with breast buds and pubic hair... I think it was 10% among whites and twice that in blacks. Scary stuff!

We've all caught "jack" salmon... anyone out there ever caught a "jill"?

Doc,
Very interesting. I wonder what the worldwide average is. If you think about it, the lifespan of women of childbearing age in developing countries is probably a lot less than here, and subsequently (you would think) that they'd need to be able to procreate at an earlier age (I think a lot of cultures marry by the age of 13-14 or so). So if this is true, since the women here live longer, and would be of childbearing age longer, (a woman of 57 gave birth to twins this week) then there should be no change or even a lengthening of prepubescence.

Doc -- In 50 years + of salmon fishing, I have caught a Jill, with a clipped Pectoral fin & confirmed by a WDFW bio.