Waste Plants vs. Birth Control Pills: New Research Could Help

New research is helping to clarify the effects of birth control pills on the water supply.

The U.S. EPA dubs these pills pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), which it is investigating as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). Pharmaceuticals may pose a threat to the water supply because they move through the human body into the sewage system, and wastewater treatment processes are not calibrated to treat these contaminants, so they wind up back in the environment.

A growing body of research is trying to shed light on the problem.

A recent study from Ben-Gurion University of Negev researchers, published in Science of the Total Environment, attempts to develop tools for wastewater treatment plant managers, the research community, and environmental officials as this problem becomes better understood.

The researchers developed a simple model “for estimating the amount of natural estrogen from birth control pills in raw sewage and how concentrations change during wastewater treatment,” The Jerusalem Post reported.

The researchers “based their results on data from 61 wastewater plants published in previous reports. To develop their model, they considered information collected from various publications about biochemical oxygen demand (the amount of dissolved oxygen that must be present in water for microorganisms to decompose organic matter), natural estrogen concentrations, and discharges of raw sewage to wastewater treatment plants,” the Post reported.

The upshot?

“The researchers’ model was shown to produce more accurate results than existing tools because it is based on a simple linear equation, which plots the relationship between direct and indirect variables, as opposed to other modeling frameworks that require large datasets or census data,” the news report said.

The authors explained their findings, per the Post:

This new model can predict likely natural estrogen concentrations in liquid waste or sewage discharged into a river or the sea from simple information about flow and biochemical oxygen demand data at a wastewater treatment plant inlet, which are commonly monitored and available.

This application is especially valuable since current models rely on estimating the concentrations of natural estrogens in raw wastewater, and direct measurement of natural estrogens in raw wastewater can be practically impossible in many developing countries due to the lack of expertise and funds.

Estrogenic contaminants may pose a threat to the sex functions of male fish, and researchers are studying if they pose a danger to humans, as well. Water Online previously reported: “Something fishy is going on in the water, and not just with the fish. Recent research suggests that exposure to [pharmaceutical products] in drinking water may subject humans, particularly males, to gender-morphing and other reproductive system alterations.”

For similar stories visit Water Online’s Contaminant Removal Solutions Center.