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Solutions
The problem of endocrine disrupters(EDs) in general has a range of
solutions. For EDs in pesticides and plastics the reasonable solution
seems to be to ban these substances, because of their toxic nature. For
the problem of synthetic estrogens, banning does not seem like a viable
option. Women are likely not going to be interested in giving up the
benefits that the pill gives to them. One step that has been taken, not
so much for environmental reasons but for health concerns, is the
lowering of the dose of synthetic estrogen in the pill. Most pills now
have a much lower dose than the amount originally in the pill. The
solution therefore must be in policy, especially in the way that sewage
facilities operate. Updating current systems will be expensive, but
there are ways to filter EDs from sewage. In Australia, new sewage
systems are being put into effect which will reduce the amount of EDs
that make it through the process of cleaning sewage.
The Australian Center for Water and Waste Technology
at the University of New South Wales in Sydney explains their current
Membrane Hybrid Water Recycling Project as a way to remove EDs from
wastewater. As their report notes, "conventional wastewater treatment
is not an effective barrier to trace contaminants" (Schäfer and
Waite). Australian processes utilized two different ways to remove EDs
from the water recycling. By adding certain amounts of activated
sludge, powdered activated carbon, and ion microorganisms to the
wastewater, they will often bond with active EDs,
making them into solids which can be more easily extracted from
wastewater. The second way is through series of membranes which will be
used in addition to solid waste extraction. In fact, between membrane
absorption and solid waste extraction more than 90% of synthetic
estrogens were removed from wastewater. This experiment has been done
at the institute and has not been implemented in any Australian city,
though the research was done in accordance and with funding help from
many major cities. This is a solvable problem. The real problem will be
funding, as instituting a multi-step filtration system in all
wastewater removal plants will be very costly. At this point it is not
economically viable in fact. While the Australian report does not
specify costs, think of the amount of money it would take to upgrade
every wastewater treatment plant in America. The amount of investment
would be staggering, but this is currently the only option that has
shown conclusive results.
Information on this page from the Australian Center For Water and Waste Technology at the University of New South Wales report on their new system of ED removal in water treatment |
Last updated: 5/2/2006
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