How harmful are hormones and drug residues in drinking water?
Hormones and medications control important processes in our body and have been proven to take effect even in the tiniest amounts. In studies near wastewater treatment plants, feminization effects on fish were observed due to contamination with hormone residues. For example, male brown trout form egg cells in their testes. Whelks, along with around 100 other marine animals, suffer the opposite phenomenon: their females develop a penis and become unable to reproduce. It is suspected that the mutations don't stop at humans either. Across Europe – with large regional differences – a decrease in sperm counts in men can be observed. But drug residues also have serious consequences for aquatic organisms. The Swiss researcher and ecotoxicologist Natalie Chèvre put it this way in her study on freshwater crustaceans: «If you keep freshwater crustaceans in water treated with the breast cancer drug tamoxifen, the animals' reproduction changes and the babies also have abnormalities.»
How do hormones and drug residues get into our drinking water?
Germans consume a large amount of pharmaceuticals (medications, hormones, hormonally active substances, etc.). The Federal Environment Agency estimates 30,000 tons annually. Because of the rising average age, the agency expects a further increase in the environmental burden from pharmaceutical active ingredients and their breakdown products. We ourselves are responsible for the pollution of our drinking water with pharmaceuticals: painkillers, diabetes medications, antibiotics or hormones from the birth control pill. These are taken in orally or via the body (e.g. creams). The body largely can't absorb them at all and excretes up to 90% of the substances taken in on the trip to the toilet, or they get washed off in the shower.
Unfortunately, expired medications are also often disposed of via the toilet. This is how hormones and drug residues get through the wastewater into our treatment plants and from there into the entire water cycle. The treatment plants and water treatment facilities are powerless against the large amount of synthetic substances we take in every day and let them pass through practically unfiltered. So the unwanted substances, which are active even in the smallest amounts, ultimately end up in our tap water too. Incidentally, they don't stop at expensive, environmentally harmful bottled water either. When examining 20 different mineral waters, researchers from the Department of Aquatic Ecotoxicology at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main found in a study from 2011 that twelve mineral waters show significantly increased estrogenic activity.
Active ingredients with at least one positive finding in drinking water in Germany, shown by the highest concentration measured in drinking water MECmax,TW. The figure on the bar indicates the number of database entries in drinking water. Source: Compilation of monitoring data on environmental concentrations of pharmaceuticals, Federal Environment Agency 2011.
What to do about hormones and drug residues in drinking water?
There are a few well-known and scientifically verified methods for removing pesticides from drinking water. One example is the use of highly porous activated carbon. Activated carbon has an immensely large specific surface area (comparable to a sponge) and has the property of binding numerous chemical substances on its large surface. Activated carbon is therefore built into the water flow in such a way that as much carbon as possible is surrounded by the water and the water spends as much time as possible in contact with the activated carbon (so-called contact time). This binds hormones and drug residues firmly to the activated carbon and removes them efficiently and in a targeted way from the water flow. Activated carbon is a natural product. In the case of drinkpure the activated carbon built into the filter is obtained from the remains of coconut shells.
drinkpure also filters other substances out of the water. Here you'll find an overview of what DrinkPure can filter.