By BRIAN RUDMAN
Having made a career out of taking the contrary view, I don't find it comes naturally to side with the powers that be. With the latest silliness surrounding Watercare's Waikato River pipeline, however, the choice is easy.
On the one side you have a group suggesting that Watercare is risking our health by permitting waste oestrogen and other contaminants to slip into our new water supply.
Watercare says that far from poisoning its customers, it is building a multibarrier treatment system that will remove all pathogens, hormones and other chemical substances. On this hit list would be all viruses, bacteria, parasites, hormones, tastes and odours.
Now maybe I'm going naive in my dotage, but I'm going with Watercare on this one. Why would they cut corners and then lie about it?
It doesn't make sense. It is, after all, a utility owned by you and me, responsible for providing us with top-quality water.
The latest alarm has been raised by Auckland City councillor Maire Leadbeater.
She says that oestrogen (from birth control pills) and other pollutants could slip through the treatment process, adding that the long-term health effects from these pollutants are not known.
I go along with her concerns about the impact of man-made chemicals on human health, but pointing her finger at Waikato water seems misdirected. From my speed read of the subject, it would appear that of the food and liquid we eat and the air we breathe, the Waikato water is likely to be far less risky than anything else.
It's not just the pesticides, PCBs and dioxins that we've vaguely heard of that we have to worry about. It's the 87,000 other potentially dangerous chemicals the US Environmental Protection Agency has identified.
One such report says we have up to 500 chemicals in our bodies in measureable amounts that were not there 40 years ago.
That's not surprising, given that for 50 years we've co-habited with these chemicals. They're in our planes, cars, buildings, electrical wiring, clothing, food, shampoos and electrical appliances.
Of these chemicals, a lot of scientific attention has been directed at those which have the ability to mimic the effects of the female sex hormone oestrogen. These mimics are widespread and include pesticides, PCBs and dioxin.
Some scientists argue that oestrogen and its mimics get inside the hormone system of humans and wildlife and disrupt it.
The hormone system regulates a wide range of an organism's functions, including the reproduction system, brain and nervous system and development through its life-span.
As long ago as 1978, scientists working for the Thames Water Authority in Britain - one of Watercare's consultants - discovered that 40 per cent of male roach fish in the River Lee in Hertfordshire were hermaphroditic and sterile. Artificial oestrogen from contraceptive pills processed in a nearby sewage works was blamed.
In humans, the most puzzling worry has been the abrupt decline in sperm count. In 1992, an analysis of 62 sperm-count studies by Elisabeth Carlsen concluded that sperm count throughout the industrialised world has declined by about 50 per cent in the past 50 years.
And Third World countries are beginning to mirror these figures.
Auckland is no exception.
John Peek, scientific director at Fertility Associates, says that since the early 1980s, its Auckland clinic has tested samples from 500 to 600 potential donors.
He estimates that in that time the average sperm count of Auckland volunteers has halved.
He emphasises that this is hardly a controlled scientific study. But the trend seems clear. The cause? He doesn't know.
However, the Environmental Protection Agency expresses concern at the growing evidence pointing to man-made chemicals, in particular the mimics. Hunting them down in this part of the world seems a good idea too.
But seeking them in purified Waikato water seems pointless.
Particularly as the Auckland sperm count plummeted long before the Waikato pipeline got underway.
<i>Rudman's city: </i>Water row masks poison within
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