Associated Press Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water

Associated Press has investigated, for the past five months, the safety of drinking water and the results of the probe find drugs in the drinking water of many major, metropolitan area's public water supplies. The probe finds drugs in the drinking water such as estrogen, sex hormones, radiation or chemotherapy prescriptions, painkillers, mood stabilizers, heart medicine, anti-convulsions and antibiotics.

In the San Francisco water supply is was a sex hormone, New Jersey water supplies showed angina for heart patients and mood stabilizers. New York public water supplies showed heart, antibiotics, estrogen, tranquilizers and mood stabilizers. In Philadelphia, 56 different drugs were found, California, 18 different drugs.  All told, they tested and found prescription drugs in 24 major city public water supplies they tested. Of course, over-the-counter drugs such as acetaminophen and ibuprofen were found commonly.

So, how do pharmaceutical drugs get in drinking water? Good question, many hospitals and treatment centers dispose of sewage waste into the public sewage systems, which are now reclaimed, distilled and recycled due to water shortages and droughts.  Drug use in Americans has risen 12% in the last 5 years and the US now spends 3.7 billion dollars on prescription drugs and 3.3 billion dollars on non-prescription drugs, and these all flow back into our water supply, which is recycled, and into our groundwater and aquifers, through farming operations and feedlots for plant growth, as well as our meat herd steroids, for more muscle and poundage.

Take the case of a Nebraska feedlot, where cattle are given time-released steroids through an ear tag, when a downstream water supply was tested, the chemical tests came back 4 times higher downstream, than upstream.  The native, fathead minnow species was found to have low testerone levels and small heads downstream, and more normal levels and the fathead they are named for upstream from the feedlot. 

The chemicals in our water supply can affect the natural evolution of humans.  The same types of drugs that are in the water supply are also the same type of drugs in your drinking water that could be coming from your public water supply. Even bottled water is not safe, as it isn't regulated and come from tap. In fact, there is even a company boasting itself as NY Water, New York's tap water.

Department of Natural Resources and the EPA admit that there are no treatment plants set up to treat prescription drugs in drinking water, because it is too costly to do on a large-scale basis.  Reverse osmosis and household filtration systems can remove prescription drugs in drinking water, but this has to be done on a household level at this time. 

Now is the time for your own home water treatment options if you are concerned with drugs in the drinking water. How do pharmaceutical drugs get in drinking water? It's not a pretty picture, thank goodness; there is a way to get them out.