Sudden Concern About Gender-Bending Runoff - If In Human Drinking Water

[hatrack]

PEOPLE should not be forced to risk "feminisation" by drinking recycled sewage, says Queensland Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg.
Outlining the case against treated effluent being added to southeast Queensland's water supply, Mr Springborg said he was concerned that hormones left in the water could cause "changes to the basic metabolism of species".

"There are unanswered questions about it," Mr Springborg said. "This is particularly with female hormones, both artificial and also natural ... Research into hormones and the effect that is having on the feminisation of fish and other animals that actually drink water - and also potentially humans - it is a highly emotion-charged debate. "In a place like Queensland, we have a whole lot of options, including dams, rainwater tanks, recycled water for industrial purposes, desalination. "You don't have to drink recycled sewage."

After Toowoomba residents used a weekend referendum to vote against using recycled water to solve the city's water crisis, Queensland Premier Peter Beattie ordered that a referendum be held across the state's southeast when council elections are held in 2008.

But Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman said yesterday the Government already planned to build a pipeline capable of delivering recycled sewage to the region's main water supply, the Wivenhoe Dam, from 2008. Mr Newman said a short feeder pipeline would connect the pipeline to Wivenhoe Dam and, with change in weather patterns expected, the Government would end up pumping recycled sewage into the dam. He said the promised referendum was a "sham" to deflect a public backlash over the sensitive recycled water issue until after the state election.

EDIT

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19975923-23289,00.html

[donsu]

1. it's already doing it to fish in the Potomac River

this will be a hugh problem

and the human stats are being hidden.

doctors and nurses know what is really coming out of women's wombs.

[Recursion]

2. Plastic bottles for water/soda is a bigger problem, frankly

I mean, we're taking in literally liters of estrogen each year from the breakdown of phenols in the plastic bottles we drink water and soda from. There are some studies showing that the dramatic drop lately in teen pregnancies is not, as some had hoped, due to safer sexual practices, but rather due to massive and widespread infertility among teen males.

[suziedemocrat]

9. Widespread infertility! it might help with overpopulation, but still scary

[smoogatz]

3. Global sperm counts down significantly since 1938

No one's entirely sure why, if a quick google search is any indication.

[tavalon]

4. I would like to believe

that it is Gaia making sure the global population doesn't go much higher. Seriously, as a species, we are kind of dumb - we overpopulate and shit in our nest. Neither are conducive to continuence of our species.

[smirkymonkey]

12. And maybe she's tired of what too much testosterone is doing to

the planet.

[undergroundpanther]

5. Some good links about this..

http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/
http://www.mad-cow.org/~tom/gender_bender.html
http://www.herplace.com/hormone-info/gender-benders.htm

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Well, that explains Ann Coulter's adam apple.

She must be drinking the antidote to feminized water.

[Delphinus]

7. I don't know about this ...

"In a place like Queensland, we have a whole lot of options, including dams, rainwater tanks, recycled water for industrial purposes, desalination. "You don't have to drink recycled sewage."

IIRC, when I read The Weather Makers, by Tim Flannery, an Australian scientist, he said the water tables there in Australia were really low - that they were going to have to find other ways to get water. Now maybe Queensland is a different area than he was talking of, but that particular part jumped out at me.

[elehhhhna]

8. why is desalination so dammned difficult? Anyone?

Can't you do it with a simple STILL, for cripes sake?

[megatherium]

10. I believe it is expensive, requiring a lot of energy. nt

[NNadir]

11. The separation of salts from water requires energy. Recycled

water is a much better solution than desalination, since it has fewer solutes.

The objection here is more aesthetic than anything else. The issue of hormones and hormone mimetics is serious, but it is endemic to nearly all water supplies, irrespective of their origin. I would suspect that if one looked one would not find that the difference in these compounds was significantly different when one looked at the recycled water and the original water. In fact most rivers today do contain significant quantities of water than has come from a sewage outfall pipe.

Forty percent of the water in the United States has detectable PCE, perchloroethylene, (dry cleaning fluid) but part of the reason we know this is the vast improvement in analytical chemistry.