On the personal front I haven’t been feeling well for a couple of weeks, but I finally saw a piece of news that irritated me enough – actually more the way it was presented – that I felt compelled to post.

Recently there’s growing concern that common chemicals, pesticides, have a serious impact on reproductive health. These chemicals can mimic estrogen and cause obvious feminization in various species and most likely, in high enough quantities, have a seriously detrimental effect on human male fertility. I may have posted at one point about how fertility levels were found to be much lower in rural areas due to relatively high levels of pesticides in the environment. I’ve also read about areas, towns, neighbourhoods that are surrounded by various types of chemical facilities or chemical-using operations where the sex ratio of babies is heavily skewed towards girls. The implications of this are probably pretty obvious, over time, at least. As someone close to me – someone not exactly the typical stereotype of the environmentalist – said, “We’re going extinct!” So I was somewhat annoyed when I saw this Fox News video about a new study on this problem. I don’t know if it’s because it’s coming from Fox News, a station not known for being very environmentally aware, or if it’s because it’s become a habit not to raise alarm and always put a positive spin on things that really should just be allowed to remain what they are: negative – but I was sort of irritated by the smiling scientist at the end and all her reassurances. Polar bears and alligators aren’t exactly small animals, so I’m not real sure whether her talk about dosage is particularly realistic. Not only that, but animals don’t apply or handle full strength pesticides right out of the container. This is not a subject where reassurance is what’s needed.