Buried in a story on CNN about the presence of a number of pharmaceuticals in our tap water is this little nugget:
A sex hormone was detected in the drinking water of San Francisco, California.
Hrmm. The LIEBERALS ARE SPREADING TEH GAY!.
by John Cole| 42 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Buried in a story on CNN about the presence of a number of pharmaceuticals in our tap water is this little nugget:
A sex hormone was detected in the drinking water of San Francisco, California.
Hrmm. The LIEBERALS ARE SPREADING TEH GAY!.
Comments are closed.
Conservatively Liberal
I read somewhere awhile back that hormone levels in municipal drinking water may be affecting child development by bringing on puberty earlier. I would not be surprised to find that to be the case. We have literally been pissing in our drinking water for a long time, so this is just another form of recycling!
;)
libarbarian
If they’re spreading it, who the hell is catching it?
Oh yeah, conservative politicians.
Reminds me of a quote from Blackadder III when Blackadder is filling out the “Member of Parliment Application Form” for Baldrick
srv
Haggard, Sen. Wide-Stance – they’re all canaries in the coal mine.
demkat620
And we would have got away with it too, if not for you meddling kids!
myiq2xu
Considering the previous threads today:
Q: How do you make a hormone?
A: Don’t pay her.
HumboldtBlue
I was on the phone with the general manager from our water distirct earlier today discussing this story. She said that this has been on the backburner for a while now, and that it’s going to open a whole new can of worms.
As science gets better, testing gets better, but the big fights come over what should be tested for. She also assured me that our drinking water is unaffected because there is no wastewater upstream from the river we get our water from.
I have now opened a beer.
Keith
I use reverse osmosis at home. I’ve always been under the assumption that short of distillation, it’s the purest water you can get. I’ve heard interviews this morning where (possible) experts say bottled water isn’t free n clear, but I would figure that hormone and pharmecutical molecules are too big to get through an RO filter. But then, I’m not an expert.
Pb
Heh. You should see what they’re doing to the fish. See also, xenoestrogens, notably Bisphenol A, and the enormous amounts of plastic out there that isn’t going away.
DougJ
The war against gay hasn’t gone well in San Francisco. Particularly in the Castro triangle.
It may be time to use the q-word here.
Birdzilla
No wonder all those persons living in HANOI ON THE BAY are so ultimatly weird queer and out of their minds someones slipping strange stuff in their wacky water
AkaDad
I hope this catches on here in Massachusetts, because I’ve always wanted to try out teh gay.
Dulcie
Wow, that was crazy even for you, Birdzilla!
tBone
Pharmaceutical residues in drinking water can have all kinds of horrific effects. For instance, Birdzilla was hatched in a runoff ditch behind a Pfizer plant.
tBone
How can you be a Massachusetts resident and not have a least one gay marriage under your belt? I thought it was a state law, along with mandatory annual abortions.
AnneLaurie
Anybody else flash on Torchwood and Jack Harkness’ little speech about “the taste of east-rogen in the rain”?
demimondian
That’s a terrible thing to call Hillary — and to accuse her of hatching Bird is particularly low.
Oh. Wait. You wrote “ditch”. Never mind.
jake
Fuck the Gay Bomb, bitches! WR IN UR H2O, MAKIN U KW33R.
AkaDad
I’m a slacker.
That’s a misconception. We don’t mandate abortions, we just encourage them.
Asti
Wyrmwyd!
tBone
Despite my raging case of CDS, I do still consider Hillary to be mammalian.
demimondian
They prefer to refer to them as “examinations”, however.
Asti
Who drinks water from the spigot these days anyway? Worst thing that could happen is you take a bath in something that makes your body hair fall out.
tBone
Where do you think bottled water comes from?
Once these pharmaceuticals get into the water cycle, it’s hard to avoid them.
Asti
Have you ever heard of a spring?
demimondian
Yes, and so has tBone. I repeat…where do you think bottled water comes from?
Asti
I drink Spring water, where does your water come from?
w vincentz
Brokeback reservoir.
demimondian
My water comes from mountain springs…by way of my municipal water systems.
Asti
Well, then it’s mislabeled.
From Wiki:
demimondian
Um…you might want to go reread some of what you just posted. In fact, my municipal water is (a) harvested from mountain springs, just as I said, and (b) likely to be of significantly higher quality than the water you drink.
For instance, in the case of Arrowhead…where is the spring? Do you know? Have you examined the area around it? Do you know how it comes to be in the bottling plant?
Most bottled water is actually reprocessed municipal water.
ThymeZone
Arrowhead (Nestle) source webpage.
Asti
Did you even read what I posted? I’ll post it again. I repeat:
Demi, you’re a putz sometimes. By the way, you keep saying “bottled water”, I said “spring water” you DO KNOW there is a difference?
ThymeZone
The water in your birdbath is probably better than my city water. Our city water is taken from a system of lakes and reservoirs that are used for bathing and boating, then the water is passed through special tanks that degrade its flavor and make it cloudy and disgusting. Finally, the water is taste tested by dogs who make sure that it tastes worse than the water that drips out of your exhaust pipe.
I mean, the exhaust pipe on your car, not your personal one.
jake
Or you could wash in the aqueous emission provided by KBR.
Conservatively Liberal
One local guy was selling water by the gallon, and he described the process used to purify the water on the jug label. Turned out that the process was the one that the city used to purify the city water, and the guy was just filling his tanker truck and jugs of it from his house.
The brand name of it should have been a tip off: Water Tap Bottled Water
Hey, at least he was being honest!
Asti
Well, granted, that may be the drinking water in Iraq, I thought we were discussing the drinking water in our locale?
Pb
I do enjoy drinking the spring water when I’m up in Maine, from Poland Springs. And we do it one better, by actually filling the jugs ourselves from the spring.
jake
For that, you have to get your water from the Hudson or the Anacostia.
If the water from either of those unofficial dumps was solely used for bathing and boating people would freak out. “What is this stuff? Where’s the metallic tang? How come it doesn’t strip the enamel from my teeth? Why the hot water melt my sinuses?!”
Thank the FSM for Brita filters say I!
myiq2xu
Teh gayz.
I hear they like a large, throbbing spigot.
Asti
That ain’t no spigot, that’s a shaft. Spigots pump out water.
tBone
You’re right, different kinds of bottled water have different kinds of labeling requirements.
However, I think demi’s point was that there is no real benefit to drinking “spring water” over tap water. In fact, bottled water (whatever the source) doesn’t have to meet the same purity requirements as municipal tap water, although it may be more aesthetically pleasing. There are also significant environmental costs involved in the packing and shipping of bottled water.
As for the original point of discussion – once pharmaceuticals make their way into the hydrologic cycle, they spread everywhere – including into aquifers. Drinking spring water is no guarantee that you’re not being exposed to them.
HyperIon
modern analytical instrumentation allows determination of many compounds at very low concentrations (ppt even). this is not news. these compounds have been in the water for years and have been detectable for years. none are at “actionable” levels, as set by EPA and other “regulatory” agencies. they reflect what we have been doing to the water supply….effectively pissing in it as someone wrote upthread.
but doing something about this is not easy…another fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into (over the past 60 years or so).