Along the Same Post As Henry’s . . .

The Sierra Club along with several environmental advocacy groups filed a citizen’s petition to the EPA Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT) concerning a category of cleaning agents that, in low concentrations, produce female fish hormones in male fish. Basically these cleaning agents mimic estrogen/progesterone to produce these results. For 40 years, low-level concentrations of synthetic estrogen and progesterone have been introduced into the U.S. waters through residuals from oral contraceptives and now the contraceptive patch, etc. If the OPPT ends up categorizing these cleaning agents as toxic because of the effects on fish and other marine wildlife, then perhaps it needs to label oral contraceptives as toxic for the same reason. OPPT is taking comments on the petition until July 25^th. If you would like to link to the supporting documents go to regulations.gov. The petition is document EPA-HQ-OPPT-2007-0490-0002 and details on comments can be found in EPA-HQ-OPPT-2007-0490-0001.