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<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/06/19/415336306/hunting-ways-to-keep-synthetic-estrogens-out-of-rivers-and-seas">http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/06/19/415336306/hunting-ways-to-keep-synthetic-estrogens-out-of-rivers-and-seas</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">More links to related articles are at the web site - Laurie<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">Millions of women around the world take synthetic hormones via birth control pills or hormone replacement therapies. Not all of the estrogen-like compounds from
these and other treatments are used by the body — small amounts are excreted and end up in municipal wastewater. And there's been no good way to completely remove these hormones before they head to rivers and seas.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">But a team of scientists in the U.S. and Britain now think they may have hit upon a solution based on the combination of a common household chemical — hydrogen
peroxide — with a special ingredient to make it work faster.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">Once wastewater is released into the environment, these synthetic hormones can have negative effects on wildlife. Synthetic estrogen is a type of
<a href="http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/">endocrine disruptor</a>, a chemical that affects the endocrine system either by acting like a hormone or by blocking the action of natural hormones. It has caused some species of male fish to
become <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8897.short">feminized</a>, even causing them to produce eggs in their testes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">One possibility researchers have explored for neutralizing these estrogens before they escape into the environment is based on
<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2005/11/how_does_activated_carbon_work.html">
activated carbon</a>, which works a lot like a water filter you might use at home: The carbon sucks up pollutants and allows pure water to pass through.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">Some other scientists see
<a href="http://iaspub.epa.gov/tdb/pages/treatment/treatmentOverview.do?treatmentProcessId=-1467636837">
ozone</a> as a better option for treating wastewater. This gas is efficient for filtering water, and works by giving up one of its three oxygen atoms to bind with contaminants. Using ozone can, however, create
<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004313540200458X">toxic byproducts</a> like bromate, which the World Health Organization labels a
<a href="http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/bromate/en/">possible carcinogen</a>. Treating water in this way would require an extra step to remove those byproducts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">Demonstrations have shown both ozone and activated carbon treatments to be viable, but implementing them full-scale at wastewater treatment plants is complicated.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">In Switzerland, recent
<a href="https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19910022/index.html">
regulations</a> aim to reduce micropollutants in waterways, and the country has already begun upgrading its water treatment plants to use ozone or activated carbon. Swiss scientists
<a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es500907n">have estimated</a> that water treatment costs will increase by 10 to 20 percent for systems serving populations of more than 80,000 people, and will increase by 20 to 50 percent for systems serving between
8,000 and 80,000 people. Energy consumption, they say, will also increase.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">Peroxide-based water treatment might be a way around the obstacles of the other approaches, say researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and
Brunel University in London. They've collaborated to test a small version of such a system in the lab, and
<a href="http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150612/srep10511/full/srep10511.html">published</a> their promising findings earlier this month in the journal
<em><span style="font-family:"Georgia",serif">Scientific Reports.</span></em><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">When the scientists combined a concentrated version of hydrogen peroxide with specially-created catalysts — small molecules that act like enzymes to speed up
a chemical reaction — the mixture was able to break down synthetic estrogen in laboratory water, synthetic urine and small amounts of real wastewater. What's more, feminized male fish put in the treated water began to make less
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1241311/">vitellogenin</a>, a protein normally made by female fish.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif"><a href="http://www.chem.cmu.edu/faculty/collins.html">Terrence Collins</a>, the chemist at Carnegie Mellon who led the effort, thinks the peroxide-based treatment
method could eventually trump both activated carbon and ozone treatments.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">"We're coming in with a strong-looking alternative," he says. "It's more effective and cheaper." He hopes to team up with Swiss scientists to continue evaluating
the safety and efficiency of his group's method, which so far has only been tested in the lab.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">"I think this study is very interesting," says
<a href="http://people.epfl.ch/urs.vongunten?lang=en">Urs von Gunten</a>, who runs the Laboratory for Water Quality and Treatment at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, and was not involved in the study. "However, a lot more information
is needed to use [the catalyst] in full-scale applications," he tells Shots in an email. The main problem, von Gunten says, is the large amount of peroxide required, which would then need to be removed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">Getting rid of synthetic estrogen in wastewater is the easy part, von Gunten says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">"If one does a similar experiment with ozone, the loss of the estrogenicity takes a fraction of a second and not minutes to hours." What's needed, he says, are
further experiments to show that the catalyst/peroxide treatment can eliminate compounds that are even harder to remove — and remove them from real wastewater.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">Collins says his group is in the process of testing the byproducts of this proposed water treatment. He thinks the team's efforts will pay off.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:#E0E0E0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">"I feel very confident," he says, "that we can make a major impact on water treatment."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Laurie Tenace<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Environmental Specialist<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Waste Reduction Section<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Florida Department of Environmental Protection<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">2600 Blair Stone Road, MS 4555<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tallahassee, FL 32399-2400<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">850.245.8759<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Laurie.Tenace@dep.state.fl.us<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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