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Team:Carnegie Mellon/Ethics
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<center><font size="5" color="FFBF00"><b>Bioethics</b></font></center> | <center><font size="5" color="FFBF00"><b>Bioethics</b></font></center> | ||
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<center><font size="5" color="FFBF00"><b>Impact on the Environment</b></font></center> | <center><font size="5" color="FFBF00"><b>Impact on the Environment</b></font></center> | ||
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| + | <p align="justify">“Any change in the gender ratio or abnormality in reproductive tissue can adversely affect a population of fish, potentially reducing it with each generation”. During the summers of 2001 and 2003, a group led by University of New Brunswick ecotoxicologist Karen Kidd performed a study in which they spiked the water of a Canadian lake with the type of estrogen that is found in birth control pills. The purpose of the study was to determine how the hormone would impact the number of aquatic animals. The hormone was added at a level of six parts per trillion, which is similar to levels that have been found in treated sewage water. The male fish that were tested had some female sex tissue, regardless of size or type of fish. The lake’s population of the common Fathead minnow decreased from thousands to almost zero. The estrogen disrupted the minnow’s reproductive abilities so much that the population quickly plummeted.</p> | ||
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| + | <p align="justify>The study performed by the University of New Brunswick ecotoxicologists is crucial in understanding the environmental impact of estrogenic compounds in water. If nearly an entire ecosystem’s fish population can die out or become feminized from exposure to estrogen, this means that ecosystems as a whole are potentially in danger. When a species population is in danger of elimination due to inability to reproduce, this threatens the entire ecosystem. Species feed off of one another; for instance, if a bird population that eats fish cannot eat because the fish die out, they will experience a drop in population as well. This could also lead to any species that the fish typically eat growing exponentially in population, thus disturbing the natural balance of the ecosystem.</p> | ||
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| + | <p align="justify">Between 1999 and 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey sampled 139 surface waters throughout the U.S. Through this study, it was determined that 80% of those waters contained endocrine disrupting chemicals, most of them being estrogens.</p> | ||
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| + | <p align="justify">In 2004, researchers collected and studied a sample of white sucker fish in Boulder, Colorado. The results of this study showed that there were five times more female fish than males, and about half of the male fish had female tissue. The entire population was sterile.</p> | ||
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<center><font size="5" color="FFBF00"><b>Impact on Human Development</b></font></center> | <center><font size="5" color="FFBF00"><b>Impact on Human Development</b></font></center> | ||
Revision as of 07:15, 17 October 2014
“Any change in the gender ratio or abnormality in reproductive tissue can adversely affect a population of fish, potentially reducing it with each generation”. During the summers of 2001 and 2003, a group led by University of New Brunswick ecotoxicologist Karen Kidd performed a study in which they spiked the water of a Canadian lake with the type of estrogen that is found in birth control pills. The purpose of the study was to determine how the hormone would impact the number of aquatic animals. The hormone was added at a level of six parts per trillion, which is similar to levels that have been found in treated sewage water. The male fish that were tested had some female sex tissue, regardless of size or type of fish. The lake’s population of the common Fathead minnow decreased from thousands to almost zero. The estrogen disrupted the minnow’s reproductive abilities so much that the population quickly plummeted.
Between 1999 and 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey sampled 139 surface waters throughout the U.S. Through this study, it was determined that 80% of those waters contained endocrine disrupting chemicals, most of them being estrogens.
In 2004, researchers collected and studied a sample of white sucker fish in Boulder, Colorado. The results of this study showed that there were five times more female fish than males, and about half of the male fish had female tissue. The entire population was sterile.
