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| From: U.S. National Library of Medicine |
“Fish know all about your grimy excretions. They have to live with what you flush down the toilet every day, after all. And the unluckiest ones have an even closer relationship with you, depending on what medicines you take, where you are, and what part of the year it is.
Our understanding of pharmaceutical pollution begins nearly 20 years ago, when ecologist JP Sumpter discovered something surprising: unusually high numbers of feminized fish—egg-producing males with ovaries—were swimming in English rivers. When Sumpter and colleagues tested the water, they found something even stranger: estrogen from human birth control pills. […]
With no formal regulation in the works in the US, local governments are encouraging citizens to change what they do with unwanted drugs. Some states and cities are teaching people to bring their unused pills to special collection programs so they be disposed of as solid waste, instead of being flushed down toilets and ending up in waterways. That won’t eliminate the problem, however, because most drugs are excreted into wastewater, not flushed away in pill form.”
— Nicole Lou, motherboard
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