The potential hazards of drinking toilet water

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http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=7188
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Awash with estrogens: solving wastewater problems

By Marc P. Fernandez
Marc P. Fernandez

Marc P. Fernandez

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December 14, 2005 - Products we use daily, including household cleaners, personal care products and the pharmaceuticals we consume, end up as liquid waste that goes down the drain. Across Canada, we have developed sophisticated means to mitigate environmental impacts by sending our waste through treatment plants or lagoons prior to discharge into rivers, lakes or oceans.

However, the question remains: Do wastewater treatment plants continue to be effective in protecting aquatic organisms from potential hazards?


http://xiaodongpeople.blogspot.com/2005/12/estrogen-in-...
LONG BEACH - A male fish off the Southern California coast is getting in touch with its feminine side.

And that has some scientists worried.

Kevin Kelley, a professor of environmental endocrinology at Cal State Long Beach, is part of a team studying a species of male flatfish in Southern California waters that has been found to have high levels of estrogen, which appear to be causing feminization.

Kelley and other researchers believe that the treated wastewater draining through underground pipes into waters off Santa Monica, Huntington Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula contains human estrogen hormones expelled in human urine.


http://watercenter.unl.edu/WaterSciLab/Estrogens2007.as...
Estrogens in Wastewater Treatment Plant Effluent

By Daniel D. Snow,
Manager of Laboratory Services
UNL Water Sciences Laboratory

University of Nebraska, Omaha environmental toxicologist Alan Kolok and University of Nebraska-Lincoln environmental chemist Daniel Snow, along with their graduate students, are in the second year of a two-year study to determine whether estrogenic compounds are released from wastewater treatment plants in Nebraska and whether these compounds occur at sufficient levels to feminize male fish.

Estrogens and other compounds that mimic female sex steroids control development of female reproductive systems including those of fish. For example, male fish exposed to estrogenic compounds can develop feminine traits such as production of egg proteins. Recent studies worldwide have found that estrogenic compounds may occur in wastewater effluent throughout Western Europe and North America at high enough levels to feminize male fish. The environmental implications of these findings are only just beginning to be understood.

In the first year of this Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality-funded study, specially designed passive samplers and caged fish were exposed to water above and below the effluent discharge from wastewater treatment plants in Hastings, Columbus and Grand Island, Nebraska.

The passive samplers, designed to simulate and measure exposure of aquatic organisms to a variety of contaminants, were extracted and analyzed at the UNL Water Sciences Laboratory for a suite of natural and synthetic steroid hormones.

Elevated levels of several natural estrogens were found in the passive sampler below the Hastings plant effluent. Lower, but still detectable, levels of these compounds were also found in samplers exposed to effluent below the Grand Island treatment plant while none were found in the sampler exposed to the Columbus plant effluent, as well as three control sites not impacted by wastewater.