This Is Going to Get Worse Before It Gets Better

I was pleased to see this fine piece of investigative reporting on the front page of Thursday's Chicago Tribune about all the things you don't want in your drinking water but actually are in your drinking water.

In the article, the writers mentioned the increasingly obvious dangers to our water supply posed by, among others, estrogenic chemicals:

Other researchers are trying to figure out which drugs pose the greatest health risks. Some over-the-counter medications might be found in higher concentrations in drinking water, for instance, but small amounts of chemotherapy drugs and birth control pills could prove to be more toxic. Moreover, there are many drugs, pesticides, detergents and other chemicals that mimic human hormones. These substances, known collectively as endocrine disrupters, are seen as potential contributors to various types of cancer, birth defects and developmental problems.

"What we are seeing are the inconvenient consequences of a convenient lifestyle," said Conrad Volz, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh who studies environmental hazards. "Given what we already know about many of these compounds, there is reason for concern."

The inconvenient consequences of a convenient lifestyle — indeed.

Clearly, it's good to see more MSM news outlets report on the serious dangers birth control pills pose to the environment (that is, to ourselves). I fear, however, that this problem is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

This is a classic application of Mark Shea's Two Phases of History. Phase One, you may recall, is:

What could it hurt?

Phase Two, which we are on the cusp of entering, is:

How could we have known?