Tag Archives: ecosalon

I’m a big fan of EcoSalon, so I was honored to be able to contribute this story to their blog:

Last year I decide to “green” my birth control.

My decision stemmed from a combination of concerns—OK, guilt—related to how I was keeping myself baby-free. Some environmental drawbacks of birth control are obvious: I cringed every time I tossed an empty blister pack and its handy plastic case in the trash (my pharmacy isn’t into the idea of giving me just the blister pack so I can reuse the case-I’ve asked).

But that wasn’t my main concern. I had read in Scientific American that every time I peed, I was flushing synthetic estrogen down the pipes, to a water treatment plant that does not treat for hormones, and out into the waterways where it was doing disturbing things to the reproductive parts of fish.

It turns out that the main culprit in the cancer-causing levels of estrogen in our water is our agricultural system, but at the time, I wanted to do right by my aquatic friends and other people who would eventually be drinking water with the estrogen that passed through my body. (Nice image, right?)

And there were other, more selfish reasons I wanted to discontinue my use of hormones.

To read the rest, head over to EcoSalon.