At long last, it was good to see some recognition of the chemical pollution in our drinking water by Wessex Water Company. They published this article in their autumn/winter magazine for 2013.
Out of all the pollutants mentioned, the synthetic hormones in the pill would be by far the worst and the most sinister as they are so potent and they cannot be broken down by nature’s natural processes. They can exert oestrogenic effects on wildlife particularly fish where the males are showing deformities in their reproductive systems. Their sexual organs are changing from male to female. The fishermen have been seeing this for years as was shown in a Countryfile documentary in 2002. See article here.
Unless the water companies or households have a reverse osmosis (RO) water system plumbed in, these hormones can end up in our drinking water where they can cause havoc with our own endocrine systems; why wouldn’t this happen? After all, the hormones were designed to have an effect on the human body and are so small (the size of a nanogram, 1billionth of a gram) that special RO filters are the only way to remove them. The effect of oestrogen on the body is so powerful that if it were to be compared to a grain of salt in an Olympic size swimming pool, you would be able to taste the salt.
For a number of years scientists have been extremely worried about this and are currently investigating the impact these very powerful hormones are having on us. Please see environmental poisons here.