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Drugs in Water: A cocktail is in our drinking water |
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A cocktail of pharmaceutical drugs – including antibiotics,
anti-convulsants and mood stabilizers – is in the public water supply
in the USA and the UK. Up to 100 different drugs have been detected in
our water supply, and in reservoirs, lakes and rivers.
While the
amounts are very low, scientists are worried that they may still have a
detrimental effect. “These are chemicals that are designed to have
very specific effects at very low concentrations. That’s what
pharmaceuticals do. So when they get out to the environment, it should
not be a shock to people that they have effects,” says zoologist John
Sumpter at Brunel University in London.
The drugs are getting
into the water supply from human waste and from people who are throwing
away the drugs unused. Anabolic steroids, which are put into cattle to
pump them up, are also getting into our drinking water.
Scientists
are concerned that the drugs could be made more toxic by the chlorine
that is increasingly being introduced into the public water supply.
A
new report in America has discovered that at least 41 million homes
throughout the States are regularly drinking water that is laced with a
vast cocktail of drugs. The water supply in 24 metropolitan areas,
including Southern California, Northern New Jersey, Detroit and
Louisville, has been contaminated.
None of the existing
filtration plants has been designed to eliminate drugs, and the same
may also go for the standard home filter systems. Reverse osmosis is
the only technology that can remove traces of pharmaceuticals, but it
is too expensive for water companies to install for large-scale
filtration.
(Source: Associated Press, March 9, 2008). |
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