Fishy waters

          If you’ve decided to go off your birth control pills do the fish a favor and don’t flush the leftovers down the loo.

         A Washington Post story by Susan Q. Stranahan says that small amounts of 100 pharmaceuticals have turned up in America’s water. Currently they're not seen as a threat, but an EPA water chief with the fab name of Benjamin Grumbles has said “there’s still uncertainty about their potential effects on public health and aquatic life,” in the long term.”Get this: “Hormone-disrupting pharmaceuticals,*" Stranahan writes, are a possible cause of  of “intersex” fish in the Potomac River basin: male smallmouth bass producing eggs, females exhibiting male characteristics." Nothing against gender-bending fish, but shouldn't sex changes be on a voluntary basis?

        I realize it says “one possible cause” so it's unproven, but the idea of drinking Viagra in my coffee makes me feel pretty icky; icky enough to make more coffee and hope there's Xanex in it. 

        The federal government formerly recommended flushing old meds or mixing them with something nasty, like cat litter and  putting them in the trash. The Office of National Drug Control Policy recently changed its advice to avoid flushing drugs and use either the cat litter method or to utilized local drug take-back programs.

*which my wonderful Publix pharmacist told me could mean estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, any hormone at all.