Worldwide She-Male Fish Mystery Widens
Emily Sohn, Discovery News:
Around the world, increasing numbers of male fish are developing female traits — growing new sexual organs and sometimes even producing eggs. The phenomenon has been blamed mostly on chemicals that get into the water and mimic the female hormone estrogen.
But a new study puts some of the blame on an entirely different class of chemicals — ones that block the action of male hormones called androgens.
It isn’t the first study to suggest that anti-androgens might be contributing to the feminization of fish. But the new research found that there are far more of these chemicals in our lakes and streams than anyone realized. And anti-androgenic chemicals in the water might affect human health as well.
“They are going to be some potent players,” said Charles Tyler, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Exeter in England. “It is possible that there are going to be many more chemicals that are anti-androgenic than are estrogenic.”
