The Sarasota Herald-Tribune using their best Rachel Carson scare tactics is worried about children exposed to lead 30 years ago in their editorial, "Lead's criminal connection".

We all know that the U.S. government banned lead paint and solder in 1978 and 1986, respectively. By 1996, leaded gasoline had been phased out. These efforts resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of U.S. children with blood lead levels considered "of concern" (from 13.5 million in 1978 to 310,000 in 2002). We clearly have a very successful program reducing children's exposure to lead.

Now we have a Cincinnati study of 250 adults that says lead leads to criminal behavior. You have to wonder if defense attorneys paid for this research study. I can see it now, "My client is not guilty because he was exposed to lead at an early age".

So why is the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and other liberal media up in arms about lead? Of course. In the environmentalist mind set they favor nationalization, central planning, and control. They want more regulations, more oversight and more bans of what you and I can and can't do. Today lead is their target.

But wait. There is a greater evil out there than lead. It is synthetic estrogen.

Synthetic estrogen is found in "the pill" and the "morning after pill" in large quantities. So how much are humans ingesting daily of synthetic estrogen? Brace yourself. The medicines used in hormone therapy contribute about 3,350 micrograms per day. The birth control pill contributes about 16,675 micrograms per day. The morning after pill contributes a whopping 333,500 micrograms per day.

So why should we worry about synthetic estrogen?

Estrogen according to a seven-year study funded by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the American Chemistry Council published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found, "Estrogen that goes down Canadian toilets -- some naturally from women, some from birth-control pills -- is enough to make entire fish species too feminine to reproduce."

Fish scientist Karen Kidd, who conducted the study, dripped small amounts of estrogen into a clean lake in northwestern Ontario over several years, just as if urine with the female hormone were running in via sewage from a nearby city.

This constant hormone bath made male minnows produce eggs in unnatural, part-female sex organs. And even after she stopped adding estrogen and the water turned clean again, the minnows almost completely disappeared for several years. Even small concentrations of estrogen can decimate wild fish populations, the University of New Brunswick biology professor concludes, even at levels found in some Canadian waters. She would not name individual rivers.

And while the minnows were prone to fast extinction because of their short lifespan (about two years), she says bigger fish such as trout or pike might also be hurt if they are exposed for long enough.

The first dramatic news of "feminized" fish came from British rivers in the 1990s where male fish near sewage plants were producing eggs and carrying reproductive organs that were partly female.

"A lot of follow-up studies showed it was the natural estrogens that women excrete and then the synthetic estrogens in birth control pills that were the main causes of feminization in male fish," Ms. Kidd said.

"The Pill is one of the most heavily prescribed pharmaceuticals in the world. There are over a million women on it in Canada."

In 2004 researchers on the Potomac River downstream of Washington, D.C., found large-mouth bass that in most respects were males, but who had eggs in their sexual organs. This phenomenon is called "intersexuality". Scientists from the University of Colorado in 2005 examined the trout and other fish that populate Boulder Creek. They netted 123 fish down stream of Boulder city's sewage plant and found a tremendous imbalance: 101 female, 12 male and 10 intersex fish. One researcher told the Denver Post, "Its the first thing I've seen as a scientist that really scared me."

So why isn't the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and their environmentalist bed fellows raging mad about this clear and present danger to our fish populations and humans? Why aren't they calling for the banning of the use of estrogen? Why hasn't the EPA banned estrogen as dangerous to our environment and fishing industry? Why isn't the Sierra Club up in arms?

According to Iain Murray in his book "The Really Inconvenient Truths", "By any standard typically used by environmentalists, the pill is a pollutant. It does the same thing, just worse, as other chemicals they call pollution." Murray shows in his book that the EPA inexplicably refuses to consider the impacts of contraceptives because "pharmaceutical regulation is a function of the Food and Drug Administration". That is like the EPA saying I won't deal with lead paint poisoning in homes because homes are a function of the Federal Housing Administration.

Murray states, "So government bureaucrats, the enforcement wing of liberal environmentalism, officially refuses to do anything about the contraceptive pollution issue in the United States. All this in marked contrast to the United Kingdom's Environmental Agency, which at least has the decency to label the contraceptive pill a pollutant, even though it appears powerless or unwilling to do anything about it."

So what about environmental groups like the Sierra Club. Surely they must be concerned about the destruction of our fish population and its effects on us humans, right? Wrong.

Iain Murray points out, "The current head of the Sierra Club, Carl Pope, was once political director of the group Zero Population Growth."

Back in 1970, the Sierra Club adopted the following resolution which states in part: "Be it resolved by the undersigned organizations...That we must find, encourage, and implement at the earliest possible time the necessary policies, attitudes, social standards, and actions that will, by voluntary and humane means consistent with human rights and individual conscience, bring about the stabilization of the population of the United States and then of the world..."

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune and their ilk will not attack synthetic estrogen because they are attacking their own. Feminist organizations like NOW, Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, Zero Population Growth and the World Wild Life Fund which states on its web site that, "We should supply contraceptives to all those 180 million people in the developing world...even if there is no population problem".

You see humans are the enemy not the environment. We must control the number of humans who are themselves "pollutants". By reproducing we are harming mother earth. So synthetic estrogen, which is destroying our fish populations and humans, is good because we are preventing more humans.

Does anyone else see how sick this ideology really is?