Lately, television commercials in Europe and the United States have shown scantily clad women sporting the latest accessory–a contraceptive patch. Impregnated with the same synthetic estrogen that’s in birth-control pills, these plastic bandages are worn for a week and then tossed. Some scientists now worry that because the discards still contain plenty of the hormone, sending them down toilets or into landfills risks harming wildlife.
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