11 ms·
Review of 17α-ethynylestradiol in water across 32 countries: Estrogenic effects
- swayvil 4y ago2 obvious questions (because I can't penetrate this stuff) Is this feminizing our population? Does this affect the way we think?
- __s 4y agoWhat does feminizing mean?
- swayvil 4y ago
- Brotkrumen 4y agoYes, it does feminize the population. Just the other day I saw this guy being all hysterical about an article. Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32286142#32286827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32286142#32286827
- SnowHill9902 4y ago
- treeman79 4y ago
- ben_w 4y agoOne day a few years ago, just as I reached my flat, a young child looked at me, turned to their mother and said “Mommy, mommy, is that a boy or a girl?”, because my combination pony tail and facial hair confused them. A few grown men have had the same problem, beginning a wolf-whistle when they saw me from behind only to abort part way through as they saw the front of my face.
- roflyear 4y agoYou're not as clever as you think you are.
- virgulino 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminization_(biology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminization_(biology)
- lazide 4y agoTo expand on the Wikipedia article of a peer comment: - feminine features such as gynocomastia (used to be very rare, now quite common) - decrease in sperm counts across the male population, which has been well documented. - statistically significant decreases in traditionally male ‘problems’ (violent crime being one obvious one), but also aggressiveness in general. Well documented, but there are many possible causes there. - behaviors that change from stereotypical male behaviors (which female->male trans folks I’ve know say were clearly from testosterone) towards more female ones. Including aggressive seeking of sex, towards general ‘meh’. As to what is causing it or why, who knows - but that’s what it means, and it does seem to be a thing.
- Sunspark 4y agoMy personal feeling on the decreases in violence and crime that it is very plausibly a lagging indicator showing the effect of the phase-out of leaded gasoline, paint, etc. It is well documented that people with lead exposure during their developmental period have problems including more predisposition to violence and crime.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoBreasts on men at a higher rate per capita, is a portion.
- nonameiguess 4y agoI have no idea why this was posted without full-text available, but there is at least this: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0301479721008665-ga1_lrg.jpg https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S03014797210086... I guess if you live in South America or China, then maybe the population is being feminized. Otherwise, no, at least not by this.
- georgia_peach 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- norwalkbear 4y agoYes it is
- marricks 4y agoI'm concerned this is making numbers here because of fear mongers so I want to run the numbers a bit to > The top 10 countries ranked in the order of high to low average EE2 concentration in surface water, were Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Laos, Brazil, Argentina, Kuwait, Thailand, Indonesia and Portugal, with the respective mean concentrations of 27.7, 22.1, 21.5, 21.1, 13.6, 9.6, 9.5, 8.8, 7.6 and 6.6 ng/L Going by Wikipedia, lets see what a does is... "Doses of more than 50 µg EE are considered high-dose, doses of 30 and 35 µg EE are considered low-dose, and doses of 10 to 25 µg EE are considered very low dose"[1] More specifically for transfem use of 2mg orally is considered a low dose[2] Let's consider that the average person drinks 4 liters of water a day. In Vietnam that's 0.11µg a day, or 1/100th of a normal dose for an estradiol treatment for birth control and 1/20th rate of a "low dose" for MTF transfem usage in the most polluted country. Do I think this pollutant is fine and not a concern? No. It has other side effects and it's probably not great to have all the compounds we give to livestock running off into our drinking water. I bring this up because of the right wing fear of the "feminization of men." Vietnam you could get 1/20th a low dose of EE2 a day and whatever you're getting elsewhere less. Where the right wing ideology on this is strongest (US perhaps?) people would be getting a lower dose than even listed in the abstract, so 1/80th or less a day. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethinylestradiol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethinylestradiol [2] https://transfemscience.org/articles/e2-equivalent-doses/ https://transfemscience.org/articles/e2-equivalent-doses/ ---- EDIT: a different comment actually posted a chart showing the level of exposure in the US, which is LESS than 1ng. So less than 1/200th of a low dose. Calm down folks, or at least find something different to be afraid of.
- georgia_peach 4y agoIdeology doesn't factor into this. There is something in the water that shouldn't be there, and someone put it there---largely without permission. And what constitutes a "low dose" frequently changes by several orders of magnitude depending on who does the study, and who paid for the study.
- marricks 4y agoI agree! I explicitly state that I don't think random pollutants are good in that comment and there could be other reasons to care about it. I'm merely calling out that the thing most people freak out about with this compound (feminization) is not worth freaking out about.
- aaron695 4y ago
- eurasiantiger 4y agoAs ridiculous as it is, this one is very likely true. For a thorough review, see ”Gay Frogs: A Deep Dive” by Oki’s Weird Stories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5uSbp0YDhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5uSbp0YDhc
- tzekid 4y agoWhy was the parent comment banned? People don't wanna tip the "Alex Jones was right" jar, or something?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- marricks 4y agoApparently everyone is downvoting everything they can because this is a sensitive topic. I'd just like to call out, where feminization is a major concern (US, maybe Europe), there is less than 1ng/L of this compound in water, see elsewhere on this thread for the graphic. The lowest dose of EE2 for trans-women is 2mg a day orally. That means whatever the dosage is in the US it's less than 1/10th* of what trans folk find actually useful. That's based off drinking 4 liters of water a day, lord knows most people don't drink that though. In summary: US and Europe folks don't need to care about this and if you see a news story hyping this compound up, it's probably just that: hype. *EDIT: I had a couple mistakes here: - EE2 is not estrogen and can be considered ~100x more effective - 1ng / 1mg is 1000th not 100th.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- goda90 4y agoIs there any accumulation in food? Is it heat stable to survive cooking?
- marricks 4y agoIf you live in the US lead* is probably a far greater concern, and that sure does survive cooking.
- georgia_peach 4y agoThis is a diversion, not a direct answer to the question asked.
- lazide 4y agos/led/lead/ ?
- oceanplexian 4y agoThis still sounds concerning to me, if the dose is 2mg for a healthy adult what is it for children and infants? What about babies in the womb? We saw the same exact thing with PFAS/PFOA, the experts said it was harmless, present in impossibly small quantities, and it would "pass right through you" for literally years. But then it turned out the experts were completely wrong. They found 2000PPM of PFAS in my Mom's well in New Hampshire, out in in the country, miles away from a Teflon factory that leaked into the water supply. She found it after hundreds of dollars of testing when I told her she should be paranoid.
- norwalkbear 4y ago
- elil17 4y agoNot really. EE2 is used in birth control but the spike in people being transgender (or being openly transgender, at least) does not line up with the adoption of EE2 BC (which started in the 1960s - if that was the case you’d expect to see a bunch of transgender people who grew up around then, so ages 50-70). Further, spikes in EE2 cannot explain the prevalence of female-to-male transgender people.
- swayvil 4y ago
- elil17 4y agoPossibly - although it still doesn’t explain FTMs. “Society got more accepting” seems like a much simpler theory that explains the rise in trans people. Doesn’t mean environmental estrogen isn’t a health risk, though.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- toothrot 4y agoIt's not taboo.
- elil17 4y agoIt was back then. And still is in many places
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
- baldisbasics 4y agoI swear, everyone in my part of the US had massive hair shedding around 2018 or so (man and woman, young and old). We speculated at the time that maybe something in the water supply was causing everyone to lose hair in clumps, and by golly this appears to match with our pet theories.
- sudosysgen 4y agoEstrogen doesn't cause hair loss in general.
- baldisbasics 4y agoHormonal disruption does, though.
- gcr 4y agoIt's common folk knowledge in my trans community that HRT often stops or in some cases partially reverse hair loss. See [1] for a case study, for example. Testosterone is correlated with hair loss and I could see how increasing T would worsen it, but blocking testosterone and increasing estrogen does have the opposite effect. 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5367483/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5367483/
- baldisbasics 4y agoI'm going off of what the cancer doc has told various family members, especially that they're hesitant to use hormone therapy for cancer patients due to the wide amount of negative consequences that come from getting your hormones out of whack.
- sudosysgen 4y agoOf course, such treatment has many side effects. It's just that hair loss isn't a side effect of estrogen that's common enough that everyone in a town would suffer it. In all likelihood some other cause or contaminant led to this.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago> Another potential contamination of EE2 is aquaculture. Based on a recent investigation, high concentrations of EE2 ranging from <0.3–7.67 ng/L in estuarine water nearby aquaculture activities in Malaysia, were re- ported (Ismail et al., 2019) Why is aquaculture waste water contributing to EE2 contamination? What step in aquaculture would create this..
- formerly_proven 4y agoFemale fish are generally bigger than male fish and caviar can only be harvested from females.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoThe example source in the paper is in Malaysia which I think is a bit too warm for sturgeon.
- zdkl 4y agoThe same process can be applied to many species of fish. I highly recommend finding some Poutargue or Tarama for alternative examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottarga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottarga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taramasalata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taramasalata
- moralestapia 4y ago>Another potential contamination >Why is aquaculture waste water contributing to EE2 contamination? Why could aquaculture ... They are not affirming it, they are suggesting a possible link, that is all.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Starlevel001 4y ago
- mancerayder 4y agoAm I the only lunatic that drinks almost exclusively bottled water? I've done so since I was a child.
- athorax 4y agoWhere do you think the water in those bottles comes from exactly?
- mancerayder 4y agoWhat are you implying? San Pellegrino, Evian, etc - I'd expect less garbage in it than municipal water. Why would spring sources be contaminated in the same way?
- dbetteridge 4y ago> Nearly 64% of bottled water in the U.S. comes from municipal tap water sources. Which means we often pay for water that we could drink for free from our tap. Companies that sell bottled tap water, collect the water and treat it before bottling. https://waterpurificationguide.com/brands-of-bottled-water-that-are-actually-tap-water/ https://waterpurificationguide.com/brands-of-bottled-water-t...
- mancerayder 4y agoThe two examples above aren't in the 64%.
- driverdan 4y agoIf you're worried about water quality you're much better off drinking filtered tap water. Most bottled water is just municipal water with extra trash.
- mancerayder 4y agoIt's primarily for taste. I can't stand the taste of tap water, anywhere. While everyone seems used to it, the chlorine and chemical flavors, sometimes bordering on slightly sweet, are repulsive.