Prescription Drugs... In Our Drinking Water?

This blog was created to inform the general public, nursing community, and other water consumers of alarming facts concerning the purity and safety of our drinking water, and to encourage safer disposal of unused drugs. Hundreds of active pharmaceutical drug residues contaminate our water by many different means, placing human health, wildlife, and our environment at risk. Think bottled water is a safe bet? Think again.
Twenty years ago, the EPA found that sludge from a US sewage treatment plant contained aspirin, caffeine, nicotine, and clofibric acid, but the findings were not deemed significant! European scientists have been at the forefront of research after traces of powerful drugs were found to be contaminating sewage, treated water, and rivers throughout Germany. The astonishing number of pharmaceutical pollutants found include antilipidemics, antibiotics, antiepileptics, hormones, analgesics, chemotherapy drugs, psychiatric drugs, and many others!
Our federal government has set no standards or safety limits for drugs in water, and results of independent investigations have remained largely unpublicized. Many scientists say that the synergistic dangers may be much greater than we realize and the evidence is compelling.
What can be done to clean up our water supply and reverse this dangerous problem?

· Seehusen, Dean A., Edwards, J. Patient Practices and Beliefs Concerning Disposal of Medications. (2006). <http://www.jabfm.org/cgi/content/full/19/6/542>

· Water Resources Research Center, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Arizona.Pharmaceuticals In Our Water Supplies, July 2000 http://ag.arizona.edu/AZWATER/awr/july00/feature1.htm


Have you ever heard of pharmaceuticals being found in our water?

Thursday, October 29, 2009

World's Highest Drug Levels Entering India Stream - ABC News



   This is a very interesting and disturbing article that brings to mind the badly polluted conditions that people must live in  elsewhere in the world.  India is one of the world's largest exporters of pharmaceutical drugs, and the US is their biggest customer.

  Wastewater downstream from a plant where 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues contained 150 times the highest levels found in the US!

   For the first time, the India studies have proven that drug manufacturers, and not just consumers, are responsible for widespread contamination of water.  Water from the Indian treatment plant resulted in tadpoles 40% smaller than those growing in clean water.  When certain drugs are mixed with bacteria, like those present in raw sewage, resistant strains of bacteria develop and proliferate.  Researchers have found in the laboratory that human cells grow abnormally when exposed to certain pharmaceuticals.  The precarious list of implications emerging from the latest research just keeps growing, and it doesn't take a scientist to imagine the potential disasters in store if this pollution continues unabated.









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2 comments:

Devin said...

Being a school nurse who specifically works with pregnant teen girls, I am always stressing, "drink, drink, drink your water!!!" I stress at least 8 to 10 glasses of water a day. It is scary to think that those students who are growing babies inside of them could be taking in harmful substances from their water without them knowing! I do stress importance of filters if they do have them, but some of my students can not afford to buy them and can only drink the tap water. You just hope and pray that the water is safe enough.

October 27, 2009
Courtney said...

That is unbelievable that there were such exponential levels of pharmaceuticals in the water in India.

October 28, 2009

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Does the presence of multiple pharmaceuticals in the water supply and their effect on health concern you?