Pollutants change 'he' frogs into 'she' frogs

How do you change a 'he' frog into a 'she' frog without doing a sex change operation? Give it estrogen from the tadpole stage...

An experiment conducted in a university lab in Sweden using environmental pollutants, actually literally changed male tadpoles into females as a result of the estrogen-like pollutants akin to that found in our environment. The results were startling: whereas the percentage of females in two control groups was under 50 percent -- not unusual among frogs -- the sex ratio in three pairs of groups maturing in water dosed with different levels of estrogen were significantly skewed.

Even tadpoles exposed to the weakest concentration of the hormone were, in one of two groups, twice as likely to become females. The population of the two groups receiving the heaviest dose of estrogen became 95 percent female in one case, and 100 percent in the other.

"The results are quite alarming," said co-author Cecilia Berg, a research in environmental toxicology. "We see these dramatic changes by exposing the frogs to a single substance. In nature there could be lots of other compounds acting together." Really!! Does this surprise anyone? There have been and continue to be more and more cases of "hermaphodites" in new born human babies who are born with both male and female genetials or other malformations. I imagine the percentage of the cases that were affected is what is shocking. But here's the crux of the matter. This is already a problem in humans. Look at what we are doing to ourselves and our future generations. This may be yours and my children, grand children, or great grand children. This is troubling and cause for concern. Another reason I guess, why the researchers were shocked at the result of their experiment.