Water turns frogs gay

Image Downloads. John P. Giesy, a professor of zoology at Michigan State University in East Lansing, and his colleagues found last year that, at large doses, atrazine ups production of the enzyme aromatase, which converts androgen hormones to estrogen hormones.

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a history of repeatedly sharing unfounded conspiracies that man-made chemicals in the environment could be making children gay or. As Hayes later discovered, many atrazine-contaminated ponds in the Midwest contain native leopard frogs with the same abnormalities.

A restricted herbicide, atrazine is used primarily on crops, not around the home, and can be purchased and applied only by certified applicators. In addition, microscopic examination of the internal organs of the frogs is required to detect the hidden effects from low-dose exposure.

Abnormal gonads in a male Xenopus frog, the result of exposure to the herbicide atrazine. In a rant that has since become a meme and a line of t-shirts, Jones said he didn't like the government "putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay." "The majority of.

Because the herbicide has been in use for 40 years in some 80 countries, its effect on sexual development in male frogs could be one of many factors in the global decline of amphibians, he added. In the present study, we examined the long-term effects of atrazine exposure on reproductive development and function in an all-male population of African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis), generated by crossing ZZ females (sex-reversed genetic males) to ZZ males (SI Materials and Methods).

Hayes, associate professor of integrative biology, and his colleagues report that atrazine at levels often found in the environment demasculinizes tadpoles and turns them into hermaphrodites - creatures with both male and female sexual characteristics. The findings come at a time when the EPA is re-evaluating allowable levels of atrazine in drinking water, which stand today at 3 parts per billion ppb , and has drafted new criteria for the protection of aquatic life, limiting four-day average exposures to 12 ppb.

His description. Press Releases. Some studies in cell culture point to a possible biochemical explanation for the observed effects on amphibian sex organs. The herbicide also contaminates drinking water supplies in many communities in the Midwest, leading some environmental groups to voice concern about its effect on children, infants and the fetus.

In their journal article, Hayes and his colleagues write, "The effective doses in the current study Hayes doubts that atrazine has such severe effects on humans, because the herbicide does not accumulate in tissue and humans don't spend their lives in water like frogs do.

Popular weed killer demasculinizes frogs, disrupts their sexual development, UC Berkeley study shows 04 April By Robert Sanders, Media Relations. The frog has become a hermaphrodite, that is, it has both male testes and female ovaries sex organs. Alex Jones telling the truths that the globalist don't want you to know.

The changes he found in the gonads were not discovered with the traditional high-dose atrazine experiments used in the past. Nevertheless, the effects of atrazine on frogs could be a sign that the herbicide is subtly affecting human sex hormones, too, interfering with androgens, such as testosterone, that control male sex characteristics.

In the podcast, Kennedy referred to a study that found that exposure to the herbicide atrazine in water caused some male frogs to develop female sex organs and become infertile. Most notably, American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones cited research on the effects of atrazine on frogs, which can induce spontaneous sex change or hermaphroditism, to claim that the U.S.

government was "putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin’ frogs gay" as part of a "chemical warfare operation" to increase homosexuality and. High-resolution image available for download. The herbicide atrazine, one of the world's most widely used pesticides, screws up the sex lives of adult male frogs, emasculating three-quarters of them and turning one in 10 into females, according to a new study by UC Berkeley's Tyrone Hayes.

Even with today's limits, levels of 40 ppb atrazine have been measured in rain and spring water in parts of the Midwest, while atrazine in agricultural runoff can be present at several parts per million. Hayes found hermaphroditism in frogs at levels as low as 0. France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Norway are among countries that have banned the use of atrazine.

The herbicide also lowers levels of the male hormone testosterone in sexually mature male frogs by a factor of 10, to levels lower than those in normal female frogs. To date, atrazine's effects on mammals and amphibians have been tested only at large doses, not at doses commonly found in the environment.

It is unclear whether these abnormalities lead to reduced fertility. Hayes now is trying to determine how the abnormalities affect the frogs' ability to produce offspring. Extrapolating these results from mammalian cells to amphibians, Hayes argues that atrazine could feminize male frogs by promoting the conversion of male hormones to female hormones.