Richard, a good friend of mine who raised Holstein milking heifers in eastern Washington, told me in the late 1980s that something was wrong with almost his entire herd of "precious girls"—"precious" because each heifer was worth about $2,000. The problem: their udders were abnormally large.

His veterinarian did blood tests and concluded that the abnormalities were caused by too much of the female hormone estrogen. A further test demonstrated that the source of the estrogen was the water they were drinking.

The small river running through his farm was only one mile downstream from a small town's sewage treatment plant. The vet concluded that the high level of estrogen in the water was likely a result of women taking birth control pills. The powerful estrogen was being passed through their bodies into the sewage system, and subsequently discharged into the river. Richard fenced off the river and began giving his heifers well water. Within a few months the animals were normal again.

A quick search on the Internet will turn up some alarming news articles about estrogen pollution in our waterways, not just in the USA but also in other western nations where birth control pills are widely used. Over the last ten years scientists have documented the impact of endocrine disrupters—a broad description of estrogen pollution—on everything from British trout to Florida alligators to Arctic polar bears.

In 2004 the Denver Post printed an article entitled, "Boy Fish Turning into Girl Fish found in sewage treatment plant." The article describes researchers who found fish in the South Platte River and Boulder Creek that had "deformities never seen before—both male and female tissue."

The fish, white suckers, were found downstream from one of Denver's largest sewage plants. The fish sampling results on Boulder Creek were disturbing. Just below the sewage plant the team collected 102 females, 12 males, and 10 "intersex" fish. Upstream of the plant the team found 42 females, 37 males, and zero "intersex" fish.

The article also stated, "Among the leading suspects in the gender-bending fish phenomenon: excreted birth-control hormones…" then added that "Woodling's Colorado fish study began after he read about the discovery of intersex trout below sewage plants in Europe."

Deformed fish are cause enough for alarm, but much more so are the effects humans suffer. It's a problem worldwide. In the U.S.A. particularly, a large percentage of drinking water comes from rivers downstream from the sewage plants of other cities and towns.

Author Bill Beckman, writing in the Illinois Review of February 28, 2008, noted: "Fish are not the only creatures threatened by estrogen pollution. At a conference on breast cancer in Toronto in 1998, author and cancer surgeon Dr. Susan Love said: 'Pollutants are metabolized in our bodies as estrogen.' It is lifetime exposure to estrogen that has increased world cancer rates by 26% since 1980."

Beckman also wrote: "Studies are also showing significant evidence for a link between environmental estrogens…and the early onset of puberty in girls." The phenomenon of early-onset puberty in American girls is pervasive. The average age of menarche has fallen by 1.5 years since 1970, roughly corresponding to the widespread use of birth control pills."

Mother Teresa once called birth-control pills "The suicide pill of the West."  Perhaps she was more correct than even she knew. In 2005 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the World Health Organization, declared combined estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives carcinogenic. The IARC placed them in their Group I classification—the highest level of carcinogenicity.

No wonder Beckman asked: "With this significant evidence of the growing pollutant impact of estrogen from contraceptives on both fish and humans, where is the outcry of concern?" He is correct—why do we hear so little about this potential disaster in our midst?

The answer according to Ray Peat, Ph.D., and author of The Dire Effects of Estrogen Pollution, may be that birth control is a multi-billion dollar industry and influences government agencies and media. Other authors point out that birth control is so politically correct and in sync with our modern free sex without consequences society that evidence to the contrary is not considered vitally important. But our health, especially the health of our children, is vitally important.

What can you do? You can do a lot to safeguard the health of you and your family. Several of the most critical steps are explained in the "Keys to a Long, Healthy Life" section of one of our