I bought a water filter for our kitchen tap water, which we have used most frequently for drinking and cooking, and now our water tastes great!

Even better, and one of the main reasons we got the filter, it purifies the water from the hormone estrogen and other estrogenic compounds.

Katie and I became concerned about estrogen in our water when she read some articles about it some time ago. I was not really convinced and so didn’t see a need for it, but after I looked into it a bit myself, I discovered corroborating information that seems plausible, certainly plausible enough for me to buy a $100 water filter.

What are some effects of these estrogenic compounds (from the Wikipedia entry linked above)?

Reproductive issues which are of concerns in humans are fetal exposure (perhaps leading to hypospadias) and decreased reproductive ability in men (i.e. decrease in sperm numbers). Another issue is the potential effect of xenoestrogens as oncogenes, specifically in relation to breast cancer.

So, we got an Aquasana water filter! I installed it in 5 minutes, by just attaching it to our current kitchen sink faucet. It filters out all manner of junk, including the more well-known contaminants like chlorine, but it also filters out the estrogenic compounds, which you can find on the filter’s performance data sheet (pdf format, compare what it filters with the list of estrogenic compounds on the Wikipedia site).

Has the estrogen in the water been adversely affecting Katie and me? We don’t know for sure, but it could be, so we have now removed it and are enjoying purer, tastier water!