Dr. Martin Wagner: "Mineral water heavily contaminated with estrogens - from a hormonal perspective like wastewater treatment plant water"
Dr. Martin Wagner: "Mineral water heavily contaminated with estrogens - from a hormonal perspective like wastewater treatment plant water"
Chemical products that enter the environment are always also absorbed by organisms living there. The investigation of the consequences for aquatic ecosystems is particularly in focus due to this impairment. The scientific field that deals with this topic is called: "Aquatic Ecotoxicology". (Aqua = water; Oikos = house, household, Toxikum = poison; logos = the study of)
Prof. Dr. Oehlmann has been a professor at Goethe University Frankfurt since 2001 and is an expert in this field. He and his team demonstrated hormone-like activities in mineral water from plastic bottles. Prof. Oehlmann discovered that environmental hormones are structured similarly to the hormones of the female sex hormone estrogen and influence the effect of natural hormones in humans. His colleague, Dr. Martin Wagner, aquatic ecotoxicologist from the same institute, sounded the alarm after a most disturbing discovery about the effects of the contents of mineral water in PET bottles.
Dr. Wagner had, among other things, placed snails, which are very sensitive to estrogenic substances, in water-filled PET bottles and glass bottles. In plastic bottles, the snails reproduced roughly twice as fast as in glass bottles.
However, the notification to the responsible authority remained fruitless. The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) responded to the scientists' findings as follows: "The data provided in the publication do not support the hypothesis discussed by the authors that estrogenic activity originates from PET bottles. The experiments with a snail model are also not suitable for substantiating these findings." The Stiftung Warentest also sent another critic of the Frankfurt University's thesis into the field with Dr. Frank Welle from the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering in an article about PET bottles. Whether conflicts of interest are at play or not is unknown.
Dr. Wagner was not discouraged and persisted in evaluating his observations. If the reproduction of snails doubles simply by keeping them in PET bottles, that is a strong indication that environmental hormones are being released from the plastic. Furthermore, it is known that PET bottles are certainly not completely airtight. Carbon dioxide can escape through the plastic wall, and unwanted substances can dissolve and pass into the beverage.
Effects of environmental hormones on the human body and protective options against such contamination you can find here.➡️
Studies:
🎓"Environmental hormones" in bottled mineral water: Total estrogenic burden and migration from plastic bottles
🎓Hormone-active substances in bottled mineral water: Estrogenic activity in the E-Screen