Estrogen in the Water?

I had a conversation with my girlfriend, who alerted me to the fact that, as we recycle water, there remains in the water at least some of the hormones which have been put there by women on the pill.

Excuse me as she’s a med student and i’m not, so my physiology weakness will show here. She told me that the hormones in the contraceptive pill aren’t perfectly calibrated to the task they have to do, so some are excreted, into water. I’m not sure about the recycling process, but I have no idea how they would separate out hormones in water.

That means that when I drink tap water, i’m drinking oestrogen, right? What can I do about this?

You can just drink bottled water or Britta filtered, if I remember reading it properly. T-Nation’s author CT had insight to this. Why not drop him a post in his coaching thread. He might even come in here…

Thanks, mate. I did a search, couldn’t find anything relevant. I’ll ask the man himself, and if I find out something new, i’ll link here.

awesome im iinterested

I wouldnt worry about it... Thats just pure paranoia.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/07/science/AP-US-PharmaWater-Landfills.html?_r=2

…its not pure paranoia. Bottled distilled water is probably your best bet and I’m not sure the filtering of a Britta will be up to the task, but I’m not a chemist. I too am interested in CT’s take on the subject.

So the only idea I have so far is simply to get a filter (though I don’t see how that will filter/negate/offset female hormones?). I think that it’s not paranoia. I’m not talking black helicopters here.

What I may be wrong about is how much remains in the water after recycling/treating. If the water company goes out of its way to remove estrogen etc from the water, cool. But the amount of emo boys and weak fucking ‘men’ I see around causes me to suspect we are in fact exposed to estrogen in the water.

It seems logical to me that, as our body tries to maintain homeostasis, surplus waste products e.g. those from the contraceptive pill, will find their way into the urine of women on the pill. Any ideas?

lol.

you worry to much brah.

[quote]dannyrat wrote:
So the only idea I have so far is simply to get a filter (though I don’t see how that will filter/negate/offset female hormones?).[/quote]

Yeah, I stated that without being 100% on it. I won’t be able to find where CT talked about estrogen in tap water. Just remember reading a post of his when I first joined so it’s exact details are vague.

“Officials say the drugs aren’t a threat to drinking water supplies, but could pose a risk to aquatic life because the landfill water ends up in rivers after being treated at wastewater treatment plants”

landfill water not drinking water…and even if this was coming out of your faucet, which its not, a brita filter isn’t going to filter out hormones

[quote]relentless2120 wrote:
“Officials say the drugs aren’t a threat to drinking water supplies, but could pose a risk to aquatic life because the landfill water ends up in rivers after being treated at wastewater treatment plants”

landfill water not drinking water…and even if this was coming out of your faucet, which its not, a brita filter isn’t going to filter out hormones[/quote]

QFT

If there was some chemical in the water that NONE of the water treatment processes in use could remove then your brita carbon trickle filter will be as useless as a condom made of sugar.

Yeah I wasn’t to sure. I didn’t think so but again I vaguely remember what I read. Thanks for looking into it guys.

@Samdan - Pretty much common sense now that I look at it. Thanks.

If you all are that worried just get some testosterone tablets and drop a few in your pitcher.