Latest right wing junk science (?): "Birth control pollutes the environment with estrogen!"

[alp227]

Via Right Wing Watch, quoting the American Life League:

This year, birth control advocates are celebrating 50 years of decriminalized hormonal contraceptives. American Life League and our co-sponsors don't think half a century of contaminating our waterways is something to celebrate. Study after study has shown that hormonal estrogen in the water has severely damaged the ecosystem and our health.

I searched DU for hormone estrogen topics and found this thread from 2007 about catfish without genitalia due to estrogen in the waters.

I did a Google search for estrogen pollution and found this article "Estrogen Pollution: A Potential Human-Health Disaster" by a United Church of God pastor that repeats the Life League's talking point: "...the high level of estrogen in the water was likely a result of women taking birth control pills." Most of the search results return right-wing and alternative-medicine websites, but I did find these legitimate academic reports:

Ike Shibley, "Earth’s Unisex Future?: Examining the Effects of
Estrogen Mimics>". Berks College at Penn State University: 1998

Environmental Protection Agency, "Effects of Estrogen Pollution on the Reproductive Fitness of the Gulf Pipefish, Syngnathus scovelli"

Still, because birth control has estrogen, it benefits the right wing to appeal to environmental concerns...but later turn around and defend oil-spilling corporations.


Now i conduct a search of keywords birth control estrogen pollution.

Also, an article at the National Catholic Register reported in 2007 that a research team at the University of Colorado Boulder "studied the fish and decided the main culprits were estrogens and other steroid hormones from birth control pills and patches, excreted in urine into the city’s sewage system and then into the creek."

On page 2 is an environmentalist blog that defends BC: "The whole concept of birth control is green in and of itself. People are the root of the environmental crisis, so by adding more people to an overpopulated world would put " and points out "After all, estrogen is naturally produced and expelled by our bodies. Hormones pumped into livestock can be excreted through their feces or be transferred into our systems when we eat that beef, pork and chicken. The hormone can also be concentrated through industrial processes."

[ck4829]

1. These same righties would endorse a report that said heavy metals in the water makes fish tastier

It really is sad when the right tries to feign environmentalism.

[Arkana]

2. What the fuck?

How the...I...what the fuck?

ESTROGEN?

[Canuckistanian]

3. It's amazing how far they'll go to control women's lives

It just KILLS them to know that somewhere, somehow, a woman is making her own decisions about her body.

[RainDog]

5. the pope's pedophile ring needs fresh meat nt/

[arbusto_baboso]

6. It's the classic response of someone who feels powerless in their own life.

They attempt to control OTHER'S lives in the smallest and most intimate details.

[arbusto_baboso]

4. Yes, and tofu increases estrogen levels in the blood, too, and makes men more womany.

Didn't you know that? :eyes:

Don't think for a moment that facts trump beliefs with these imbeciles. They're worse than cultists.

[struggle4progress]

7. Dunno about singling out contraception, but lots of prescription drugs and their metabolites

do enter the nation's sewer and then appear in measurable quantities in surface waters

[treestar]

8. Yet other kinds of pollution do not bother them.

:wtf: