Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I read a hypothesis that it's birth control going to waste water facilities, and then getting back into the drinking water supply. From what I read a charcoal filter lessens the effects - which I believe gets filtered through a normal refrigerator filter. Please verify this information first, it's all conjecture and hypothesis.


We don't directly recycle treated wastewater into drinking water much in the US. The closest you get is treated water being released into a river, and a city downstream uses it, there's a lot of dilution going on in-between. You'd also expect someone to notice it not affecting cities with water supplies that aren't downstream from wastewater treatment.


Birth control pill usage is slowly but inexorably declining as younger demographics start to favor IUDs more; IUDs were virtually unknown circa 2000 but today they're about equal in popularity. If true then we would expect the above trend to reverse within 20 years.


Modern IUDs release hormones.


They release progestin, not estrogen. And even then they seem to release a 3-7x lower volume of hormones per day than pills.

I also would ask for a source on the relative popularity of the hormonal IUDs vs the non-hormonal copper ones; I haven't seen any source provide that sort of breakdown.


Progestins suppress testosterone too. I don't have stats but I believe hormonal IUDs are the most popular form nowadays.


Copper IUDs still exist for several reasons and they work pretty well without hormones.


Birth control pills these days are a fraction of what they were back in say the 50's.

Women on HRT take 20,000 times the estrogen that is found in a estrogen birth control for example.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: