Listen to the podcast.

Estrogen in Water Supplies

Roughly 16 million women in America take birth controls – on purpose. But countless fish and even millions of humans are exposed to low levels of estrogen that makes it into our water supply because sewage treatment plants can’t break it down or remove it.

Estrogens enter the environment when women flush them into the sewer system or when livestock naturally excrete them and their waste runs off into local rivers and streams. Sewage treatment facilities don’t even test for them because until recently, there was no way to cleanse them from local drinking water supplies.

Now, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University say they have found an environmentally friendly way to rid our water supply of female hormones, using a class of catalysts known as Fe-TAMLS, which separate hydrogen peroxide into water and an oxygen atom. The oxygen atom is what attacks the hormones and other unwanted toxins and turns them into less harmful substances.

Chemists say the process works rapidly, breaking the hormones down in less than five minutes. Fe-TAMLs have already been used to purify water contaminated by paper mills, kill anthrax and remove sulfur from diesel fuel.

Since even low-levels of unwanted estrogen can cause neurological and developmental problems in fish and wildlife, and can be potentially harmful to humans, scientists are eager to see if this new tool could soon be used to purify human drinking water supplies.

To read more about this story, click here.

To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org