Estrogen in Americas drinking water?

BOULDER, Colo. — Researchers in Colorado have made a startling discovery. Fish, apparently male, are developing female sexual organs. Scientists believe it's the result of too much estrogen in the water and they're finding estrogen in rivers across the country.
In Colorado's rivers and streams, scientists are waist-deep in ritual of the season, using electric currents to stun native fish to the surface where they're measured and checked. But what they discovered in the white sucker fish has got even veteran scientists concerned.
"I've done a lot of studies throughout my career which extends back to 1973," says research associate John Woodling. “This is the very first time that what I've found scared me."
"This fish has characteristics of both male and female," says Dr. David O. Norris of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
And scientists have found lots of them in three Colorado rivers, all of them downstream from sewage treatment plants.
In the Boulder Creek, female white suckers outnumbered males five to one and 50 percent of the males also had female sex tissue.
Researchers say the cause is too much estrogen in the water, a natural female hormone that is found in every sewer system. But also, they say, certain chemical compounds in detergents and soaps can mimic estrogen.
Barbara Biggs, of Denver's largest sewage plant, says most of the nation's sewage plants simply can't remove all the estrogen in the water.
"We're concerned about the effect on aquatic life, but we're also concerned about our ability to actually treat for these estrogens and estrogen mimickers," says Biggs.
Estrogen mimickers are believed to be caused by chemicals called nonylphenols, found in everything from paints and rubber to cosmetics and plastics. They are considered a possible cause of kidney, eye, liver and reproductive problems.
They’ve been banned in much of Europe and are under review in Canada, but are still common in America, where they are flowing out of sewage plants and into clean water flowing into America's rivers.
Government researchers recently found natural estrogens and estrogen mimickers in 80 percent of the streams they tested in 30 states.
"We would be ingesting those chemicals, would absorb them, and they would add to whatever natural hormones we already have in the body," says Dr. Norris.
No one is certain what the impact is on humans. But since finding evidence that estrogen may be turning male fish into female fish, scientists are now looking at what it means for the nation's drinking water.
In a state that prides itself on living in harmony with nature, this is evidence, say researchers, of a hormonal imbalance.

Plastic packaging is not without its downsides, and if you thought mineral water was 'clean', it may be time to think again. According to Martin Wagner and Jörg Oehlmann from the Department of Aquatic Ecotoxicology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, plastic mineral water bottles contaminate drinking water with estrogenic chemicals. In an analysis1 of commercially available mineral waters, the researchers found evidence of estrogenic compounds leaching out of the plastic packaging into the water. What's more, these chemicals are potent in vivo and result in an increased development of embryos in the New Zealand mud snail. These findings, which show for the first time that substances leaching out of plastic food packaging materials act as functional estrogens, are published in Springer's journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research.

Wagner and Oehlmann looked at whether the migration of substances from packaging material into foodstuffs contributes to human exposure to man-made hormones. They analyzed 20 brands of mineral water available in Germany - nine bottled in glass, nine bottled in plastic and two bottled in composite packaging (paperboard boxes coated with an inner plastic film). The researchers took water samples from the bottles and tested them for the presence of estrogenic chemicals in vitro. They then carried out a reproduction test with the New Zealand mud snail to determine the source and potency of the xenoestrogens.

They detected estrogen contamination in 60% of the samples (12 of the 20 brands) analyzed. Mineral waters in glass bottles were less estrogenic than waters in plastic bottles. Specifically, 33% of all mineral waters bottled in glass compared with 78% of waters in plastic bottles and both waters bottled in composite packaging showed significant hormonal activity.

By breeding the New Zealand mud snail in both plastic and glass water bottles, the researchers found more than double the number of embryos in plastic bottles compared with glass bottles. Taken together, these results demonstrate widespread contamination of mineral water with potent man-made estrogens that partly originate from compounds leaching out of the plastic packaging material.

The authors conclude: "We must have identified just the tip of the iceberg in that plastic packaging may be a major source of xenohormone* contamination of many other edibles. Our findings provide an insight into the potential exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals due to unexpected sources of contamination."

Notes:

*man-made substance that has a hormone-like effect

Reference

1. Wagner M & Oehlmann J (2009). Endocrine disruptors in bottled mineral water: total estrogenic burden and migration from plastic bottles. Environ Sci Pollut Res; [10.1007/s11356-009-0107-7]

Source:
Renate Bayaz
Springer

Estrogen and estrogen-like compounds enter water rivers, steams and reservoirs from many sources and remain there even after passing through water treatment plants. About 80% of 139 U.S. rivers are contaminated with trace estrogen compounds. Naturally occurring estrogen compounds come from livestock urine and feces, and from human excretions which also contain contraceptives and hormone replacement medications. Other estrogen-like compounds are found in products such insecticides and plastic bottles, and they all find their way into the water supply including the drinking water supply.

The most damning evidence of the impact of estrogens in water was found in male fish swimming downstream from estrogen-containing water sources. In 2004, in Colorado, male fish were found to have both male and female sexual characteristics, such as partially developed ova, or eggs, in their testes. Fish damaged in this way have been found in the United States, Great Britain, Italy and other countries. This sex-related damage to fish may not be significant but researchers suggest that it's a warning of potential dangers to humans. Estrogens in drinking water may affect male fertility by interfering with sperm production. Links between environmental estrogenic compounds and several kinds of cancer, especially breast and testicular cancer, also have been suggested.

A 2007 study from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute's Center for Environmental Oncology found that fish caught in Pittsburgh's rivers contain substances that mimic the actions the female hormone. Fish concentrate chemicals from the surrounding water in their bodies. The study results suggest that "feminizing chemicals" may be making their way into the Pennsylvania waterways.

Existing water treatment processes, which often involve naturally occurring bacteria in sewage sludge, can only remove as much as 94% of estrogen from untreated water, but what remains is still potent enough to cause damage to fish, and, researchers fear, humans. Although harmful estrogens often remain in water after treatment, this performance is not surprising, says Texas A&M Zachery Department of Civil Engineering Assistant Professor Kung-Hui (Bella) Chu, because conventional water treatment processes weren't designed to deal with estrogens.

Chu's research interests is in biological approaches to water quality problems. In wastewater treatment, this means using bacteria to clean up the wastewater. She and her colleagues are looking for bacteria to break down organic pollutants in water. Her main focus is on searching for wastewater bacteria that are capable of breaking down estrogens into harmless products

If she finds them, the estrogen degradation ability of these bacteria could be commercialized in engineered bioreactors to remove estrogens. Chu and her colleagues have found 14 different species of bacteria that can break down estrogens and are now trying to understand how these bacteria work to break down estrogens into harmless end products. All 14 bacteria break down 17ß-estradiol, a female reproductive hormone also commonly used in oral contraceptives, to a less-potent compound called estrone. Three of the 14 break down estrone further into harmless end products, and one does it particularly quickly.

Texas A&M researchers are trying to understand the enzymes and degradation pathways that the bacteria bacterium uses to destroy estrone. Their idea is to define the optimal growth conditions to promote the growth of these estrogen-degrading bacteria in biological wastewater treatment processes as a means to break down estrogens quickly and completely — and relatively inexpensively. "Adding such a bacterium could be an efficient and relatively inexpensive way to proactively avoid adverse health effects from estrogens," Chu says.