On an indie-minded/feminist-leaning wedding message board I occasionally frequent, a journalist looking for a story asked, "Has anyone considered giving up hormone BC pills for environmental reasons (ie, because of the amount of female hormones found in the water supply)." She was met with pretty-near universal disgust. Why don't ask men to stop taking Viagra, "until we can sort everything out"? Why would she even consider "asking women to stop taking BC, for the good of the environment" a viable option?

Weird.

Well, if there are medications in the water, it would solve the problem of having to wash down pills, since they'd basically be washing down themselves. I'm just saying.

That's a lot of piss.

Virtually every heart patient has nitro, either in a spray or a tablet. Besides, making raw nitro from scratch is fairly easy. Extracting it from tap water would be the absolute most difficult and most expensive way to get it.

Melissa [has] degrees in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology, with an emphasis on the political marginalization of gender-based groups.

Clearly, someone who's highly qualified to give an informed commentary on the health risks of trace pharmaceuticals.

I have a degree in Cultural Anthropology, which gives me the the right, no, the duty, to spout off about anything which falls under the purview of "culture". This sounds like a great example of why left wing idealogues are just as idiotic and worthless their right wing counterparts.

Fixing our water supply.

pie, ideologues in general are no fun, I've always found, but that's not exactly a news flash.

hee hee
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That's funny muddgirl. One of the many reasons* I am not on the pill and haven't been for almost ten years now, is that it contaminates the drinking water, the fish and our children. I read a report many years ago about the rise of sterile men in the UK as a direct result of the high levels of hormones in the drinking water. I figured right then and there that condoms were a much better option.

*for the record, I also just plain hate the way I feel on the pill so all I really needed was the tiniest little push to quit it

I figured right then and there that condoms were a much better option.

What about condoms in the water supply? I recall a passage in City of Quartz where Aldous Huxley and Bertold Brecht are walking along the beach in Los Angeles and observe a million condoms, washed in by the tide.

Why would I flush a condom when I have a perfectly good wastebin?

but yeah condoms can be annoying for their own reasons too. I've had a whole bunch break and some of those breaking-times were way close to ovulation-time so there was some really tense days wondering if one might have accidently conceived. But then there's the whole no wet spot, no STD's advantage....

Condoms on the beach don't get there through the water supply, they get there through offshore trash dumping, which is generally legal (at least in my region) as long as you dump 12 miles offshore. That's how the tampon applicators ("beach whistles") get there too.

There are other sources about drugs in the water supply which some might consider more reliable.

So, does this mean we're literally pissing in the gene pool?

Pharmeceutical contaminants in drinking water is something that I believe should be handled on the industrial level, not the individual level. Fecal contamination of drinking water is also a problem, but we would never ask people to stop using their toilets! Why should we even consider stopping medication that prevents pregnancy and over-population? (of course, BC is a personal issue, but the choice is undeniably influenced by media exposure).

It just seemed so weird to me that the immediate focus was on the levels of female hormones in the water supply, and that the first culprit targeted was "The Pill", which has become such a political icon. Will elderly persons consider stopping their osteoperosis treatments? Could these excessive levels be more directly attributed to OTHER sources, such as hormones given to milk cows?

Pharmeceutical contaminants in drinking water is something that I believe should be handled on the industrial level, not the individual level.

The article I read in the Post this morning suggested that the drugs were ones that couldn't be filtered out, but didn't elaborate.

I linked to the blog article because I thought the commentary was amusing and pretty spot-on, and since she was writing from the AP article (and quoted it extensively) I figured that covered the actual research & news background. As others point out, it's not like she's the only one covering it, or somehow invented the story out of thin air.

I wonder how this affects those of us with well water?

As opposed to WellWater^TM?

I've never considered that stray medications would be part of the problem, but have become concerned enough about the crap that is being put in our water supply that we have set up the plumbing in our new house so that, once the final plumbing inspection has been completed, we can turn one tap on and another off and we will be completely "off the grid" as far as water goes, as long as our water tank holds out (22,000 litres). It boggles my mind that it is illegal to have access to a town water supply and not use it, but that's the modern world, I guess.