Can estrogen in water become bio-available through drinking it?
What kind of concentrations are you talking about? There’s possibly a big gap between enough to be detected and enough to affect someone’s hormonal regulation.
In that same time, the average age of puberty has continued to fall.
As it did before birth-control pills were in widespread use. And another confounding factor is that modern birth-control pills have much lower doses of hormones than the originals did, so we need to look not only at the rates of usage, but at the amount each pill contains that gets excreted.
And filtration is not the only water treatment technique. The use of highly reactive treatments such as chorine can break down such chemicals.
Detection of estrogens in the environment has raised concerns in recent years because of the potential of these compounds to affect both wildlife and humans. "
The incomplete removal by publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) of excreted endogenous estrogens and prescribed estrogens leads to their introduction into surface waters and potentially into drinking water sources that rely on surface water. Estrogens, specifically estrone (E1), 17β-estradiol (E2), estriol (E3), and ethinyl estradiol (EE2), have been detected in numerous studies of wastewater influents and effluents.
(Several links to the studies of the levels of estrogen in waste water are then provided after this quote).
This study in 2009 concluded that kids are exposed to more estrogen in milk and food than water, so it shouldn’t be a problem to worry about. However, at least imo, it never looked at overall levels of estrogen intake increasing from all combined sources as water has certainly added to it at least marginally.
So that’s all to say, I’m not 100% behind this being all true, just that there’s actually quite a bit of valid scientific studies that have proven there’s now more estrogen in our drinking and waste water that seems to be at least corolated to our medical use of it.
Can estrogen in water become bio-available through drinking it?
What kind of concentrations are you talking about? There’s possibly a big gap between enough to be detected and enough to affect someone’s hormonal regulation.
As it did before birth-control pills were in widespread use. And another confounding factor is that modern birth-control pills have much lower doses of hormones than the originals did, so we need to look not only at the rates of usage, but at the amount each pill contains that gets excreted.
And filtration is not the only water treatment technique. The use of highly reactive treatments such as chorine can break down such chemicals.
I am by no means an expert, but there has been a significant amount of studies done on the estrogen in our water levels increasing:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2854760/
This study in 2009 concluded that kids are exposed to more estrogen in milk and food than water, so it shouldn’t be a problem to worry about. However, at least imo, it never looked at overall levels of estrogen intake increasing from all combined sources as water has certainly added to it at least marginally.
So that’s all to say, I’m not 100% behind this being all true, just that there’s actually quite a bit of valid scientific studies that have proven there’s now more estrogen in our drinking and waste water that seems to be at least corolated to our medical use of it.