Posted on 05/03/2004 9:40:57 AM PDT by SteveH
Threat of women's pee no piddling problem for humanity
By Ryann Connell Staff Writer April 27, 2004
Women's weewee has the potential to wipe the Japanese off the face of the earth, screams Weekly Playboy (5/11-18).
And changes in the Tokyo Bay environment suggest this is no piddling problem.
"Marine life (in Tokyo Bay) has gradually been developing female characteristics for years and it was generally thought that this was caused by hormone balancing disrupting substances in the environment that people have been talking about for a few years now," a scientific journalist tells Weekly Playboy. "Actually, though, a Tokyo Metropolitan Government study has showed that the greatest cause of feminization of marine life has been the female hormone estrogen."
Tokyo examined hundreds of fish from 19 different breeds living in the bay, coming up with some alarming findings.
"Ovaries were found in some of the male fish. A high concentration of vitellogenin, a female protein, was also found in the bloodstream of another male fish," a spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government tells Weekly Playboy. "We see one of the major reasons for the feminization of the fish lying in the area where they were caught. It is near a sewage drain and the concentration of female hormones in the area was about four times greater than water near the shoreline. We think the influence of female hormones in women's urine passing into the sea from the sewage treatment plant has a lot to do with the feminization of fish."
When a species loses the balance between its sexes, its survival is threatened. Some fear that eating fish carrying a high degree of female hormones could see the substances carried up the food chain and the feminization of humans begin.
Tokyo officials aren't too worried, however.
"We'll be all right if we improve the sewage treatment functions," says Kazuo Kazunami, head of the Tokyo Metropolitan Research Institute for Environmental Protection, which carried out the fishy probe.
Kazunami strongly refutes suggestions that women's pee could mean we all literally, well, piss off.
"Female hormones are also found in milk and tofu, not just fish. But just eating these foods doesn't mean the stomach or intestines are going to absorb female hormones," the scientist says, adding that the chances of the potentially lethal hormones passing up the food chain are virtually nil.
Not everybody is as confident, however.
"Every woman has estrogen, so it's not like you can legislate against it like you can with other hormone balance disrupting substances like dioxin or PCBs. Natural female hormones also work faster and stronger than the artificial substances, too," the science beat reporter tells Weekly Playboy. "Who knows how wide an effect estrogen could have on the feminization of fish? Who knows whether this won't one day affect humans? Just because we don't know what's going to happen in the future, the unknown is frightening."
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WaiWai stories are transcriptions of articles that originally appeared in Japanese language publications. The Mainichi Daily News cannot be held responsible for the contents of the original articles, nor does it guarantee their accuracy. Views expressed in the WaiWai column are not necessarily those held by the Mainichi Daily News or Mainichi Newspapers Co.
thanks for that visual - eeeewwwwwww
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