Pharmaceuticals in our Drinking Water

There have been studies about our drinking water in the past. Many of them hinted that maybe our drinking water wasn't as good, wasn't as clean as we might like it to be. Some studies, as long ago as 30 years, suggested that there was trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in rivers and streams and lakes... especially near sewage treatment facilities. But most people, and certainly the government agencies, shrugged them off as small aberations, tiny blips on the screen.

But all those yawns are now turning to shouts in the wake of a shocking AP report last week on the amount and diversity of pharmaceuticals in our drinking water... that's the drinking water of over 41 million americans, in over 24 major U.S. metroplitan areas.

The story, covered by every major news reporting agency, reveals that small quantities of drugs like antibiotics, antidepressants, birth-control pills, cancer treatments, tranquilizers, cholesterol-lowering medication, blood thinners and a slew of other pharmaceuticals are prevalant in just about every water system in the country. (Philadelphia had the highest number of drugs, with 56 human or veterinary pharmaceuticals or by-products detected.)

Not surprisingly, there are currently no standards or regulations that pertain to drugs in drinking water. And the powers that be are quick to point out that these are very small amounts that shouldn't pose a serious health threat. But it does beg the question: what about a child, that drinks the water, eats food prepared with the water and bathes with the water for thirty years? Do those trace amounts build up and are they cause for concern? That is the question that many are unwilling to ask.

From previous research done both in the United States and Britian, confirm that estrogen, the female sex hormone, plays a significant role in deforming the reproductive organs of fish. In the past few years, stories have been forthcoming about the strange sex changes in fish near sewage plants.

It wasn't difficult for the researchers to figure out how all the drugs got into the drinking water. We live in a highly over medicated society where pharmaceuticals play a big role in a large amount of the population. Some of the drugs that people ingest is absorbed by the body... but much of it is not and that is what ends up in the sewage plants. Add to that the heavy use of pharmaceuticals in livestock and poultry production and you've got serious quantities flooding the water systems.

Currently there is no filtering technology available to be able to filter these drugs out of the water.

And if we just look around the corner a bit, we'll see that with the mapping of the human genome opening the possibility of targeting thousands of distinct biological receptors, the stage is set for an explosion of new drug therapies on top of the thousands already in existence. We have no idea what the impact to our environment and to our health will be.

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