[stevenmays]

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.

[worker767424]

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.

[kibwen]

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.

[tachyonbeam]

Modern IUDs release hormones.

[kibwen]

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.

[tachyonbeam]

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

[WA]

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

[mobilejdral]

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.