Didn’t finish your bottle of penicillin, and you notice it expired 3 months ago? Flush it down the toilet.
Ah, that nighttime cold medicine has a little tiny bit left but not enough for a whole dose, wash it down the sink.
The ibuprophen bottle finally opened and in the process half the pills jumped out of the bottle onto the floor. Flush them down the toilet.
And there is another way that pharmaceuticals get into the water systems that we generally don’t think about. When they are excreted from your body.
When millions of people do this, day after day, you have to imagine that your water is being laced with pharmaceuticals, over the counter and prescription. I’m sure we figure that the water filtration plants are supposed to remove all that stuff. But, as an AP investigation found, that isn’t necessarily so.
A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.
To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.
But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.
Now, I found several alarming things in this report. One, that some (most?) of the water treatment plants do not want to disclose the amount of pharmaceuticals in our drinking water.
Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public “doesn’t know how to interpret the information” and might be unduly alarmed.
This attitude that the public is too stupid I find extremely presumptuous.
The second thing I find alarming, is that the rebottlers of water, do not test for pharmaceuticals in the product they sell.
Even users of bottled water and home filtration systems don’t necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals, according to the industry’s main trade group. The same goes for the makers of home filtration systems.
Of course, we can’t expect the pharmaceuticals to admit that their drugs have an impact on our environment, via our water systems (including lakes, rivers, streams).
Ask the pharmaceutical industry whether the contamination of water supplies is a problem, and officials will tell you no.
“Based on what we now know, I would say we find there’s little or no risk from pharmaceuticals in the environment to human health,” said microbiologist Thomas White, a consultant for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
As we are finding, that simply is not true. The pharmaceuticals in our water system are altering our environment, and us.
Now, I wouldn’t suggest that we cut back on our pharmaceutical use — some of it is quite necessary. But, instead, let’s put forth a way to safely collect and dispose of unused pharmaceuticals — prescription and over-the-counter.
California’s San Mateo County has pioneered a permanent drop-off program. Officials there have set up converted mailboxes or book-drop boxes inside about a dozen police stations. Only officers can remove medications dropped in them; then the drugs are transferred to a company that collects and incinerates medical wastes.
In this way, our environment and us will be safe from the effects of unused, discarded pharmaceuticals.
