Vampire steroid comes alive at night: An anabolic steroid believed to break down in sunlight, turns out to be wrong. It's a steroid given to beef cows on industrial-scale farms, doesn't break down in rivers and streams as previously thought.

The vampire steroid that comes alive at night scientists believed that the compound, known to damage reproductive processes in fish, breaks down quickly in the presence of sunlight through a process called phototransformation, according to healthline.com.

This anabolic steroid known as "Vampire steroid," has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in cattle. When treated cattle excrete feces, traces of the steroid end up in the surrounding environment, including local bodies of water.

It is a schedule III controlled substance banned for use in humans, though many do it anyway. Anabolic steroids are a famous banned supplement that has been used to cheat in professional sports like baseball and football.

The "Steroid Era" was a time when the MLB made a comeback from what some thought was a dying sport. Guys like Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and plenty others used the substances to better their games. Records have been broken and tarnished forever because of this era that is still trying to be cleaned from the sport today with more quality drug-testing.

What was once believed that this compound that is known to damage reproduction in fish, breaks down quickly from sunlight, which is called phototransformation. Now, it has been learned that when the sun goes down and the Ph level in the river is right, trenbolone reassembles, according to David Cwiertny, one of the study's authors and a scientist at the University of Iowa's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering . This means the amount of the chemical in water sources, which have likely been sampled and tested during the day, may actually be higher than previously believed.

Bryan Brooks, director of the Environmental Health Science program at Baylor University, who did not take part in the study, said the new findings raise important questions that need to be answered.

"Reports from this paper may stimulate rethinking the timing of environmental monitoring and surveillance," Brooks told Healthline. "For example, the vast majority of routine water quality monitoring does not examine these unregulated contaminants. And if pharmaceuticals are examined in water bodies, sampling typically occurs during daylight hours and often only examines water samples from the surface of lakes and streams. Such a practice could over- or underestimate risks of various pharmaceuticals."