By KENT ATKINSON
Health officials say they cannot screen drinking water for "gender-bender" chemicals until researchers in the United States have pinned down exactly what substances are involved.
"Reliable standards cannot be developed on the basis of hearsay information," said Michael Taylor, a senior adviser to the Health Ministry on environmental
health.
Dr Taylor was commenting on research which has shown that the urine of women who take the contraceptive pill is changing the sex of male fish in British rivers, and may be making some men less fertile.
The research showed that half the male fish in low-lying English rivers were changing sex as a result of water pollution.
It said an "exquisitely potent" form of the female hormone oestrogen, found in the urine of women taking contraceptive pills, was contaminating rivers that supplied one-third of the country's drinking water.
Male fish were developing female characteristics in many of those rivers, and in some stretches all the male fish had been "feminised".
In New Zealand, said Ministry for Environment officials, there were no regulations to control the discharge into waterways of oestrogen hormones in effluent containing the urine of women taking contraceptive pills.
That was largely because no one had yet shown bad effects from such a discharge, and therefore there was no requirement to test for the compounds.
Even if tests were made for endocrine disruptors, there was no internationally agreed testing procedure.
A spokesman said no analysis would be able to reliably assess the effects of thousands of endocrine disruptors, probably until a test was developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Dr Taylor said the US research programme was complex because of the range of substances that might be involved, from household cleaners and insect repellents to the urine of women on "the pill".
Until hard information was available, the Health Ministry and the Environmental Risk Management Authority were keeping a close watch on the topic.
So far there had been no obvious signs of endocrine disrupters having an effect in New Zealand.
- NZPA
nzherald.co.nz/environment
