A drug to feminize males!!!

The rising population and the ever rising diseases and medicines invented for curing this will definitely increase the bioaccumulation of drugs in the environment. And what can it do to our mother nature? I think it would be much more perfect if I put the question the other way around. What it cannot do to the environment? Let’s find it out.

These drugs are not only harmful to the environment and the mankind, but also threaten the wildlife. Of course in weird ways. I was speechless for a minute when a researcher told me that a derivative of the hormone oestrogen can feminize a male fish!! The derivative, called ethinyl estradiol (EE2), is thought to be responsible for feminising male fish. Now, what more can you do to a male, does it really matter whether it’s a fish or a human being?

EE2 is the main active ingredient in many contraceptives and is excreted by women in a conjugated form, which can then be deconjugated in sewage treatment works and discharged in the activated state.

Numerous chemicals released in the process of drug making hold the potential to disrupt sexual development and reproduction in a diverse range of animal species by mimicking natural estrogens. And, most of these chemicals are found in waste water and ultimately will end up in rivers and other aquatic bodies. So, undoubtedly we can say that these aquatic organisms are therefore highly susceptible to the harmful effects of environmental estrogens.

It is actually shocking to know that drugs prepared for the wellness of mankind is actually destroying many other living beings and thereby the nature also. This particular case of EE2 tells us exactly how drugs discharged into the environment disrupt the normal endocrine function of wildlife.