1. Our drinking water is one of our most precious life-sustaining resources. However, as most people realize, it is not the pure and uncontaminated source of sustenance it should be to provide us with healthy ways to quench our thirst. In addition to pesticides, industrial pollutants, and other sources of man-made contamination, there is another element that is found in our water—pharmaceuticals.
  2. “The drinking water of at least 41 million Americans contains a range of pharmaceuticals, including, in various combinations” (Berg, 2008, p. 66) antibiotics, anticonvulsants, antidepressants, medications for asthma, cholesterol and heart problems, pain medicines, as well as sex hormones, steroids and tranquilizers.
  3. Berg (2008) also notes that these are not simply winding up in our drinking water supplies through processes such as runoff from animal operations, but because people are flushing their medications down the toilet and that as people don’t absorb all of their medicines, they can end up in wastewater supplies this way as well.
  4. These kinds of medications are found in trace amounts in nearly all drinking water supplies in the United States and although there is yet no consensus about how much of an impact this issue is having on our overall health, one can predict that as time wears on and the problem continues unabated, humans will begin to see experience the impacts of these elements, either due to side effects, inter-drug reactions, or simple long-term exposure.
  5. When the initial public report appeared about this issue, they made it clear that “the amounts found in the water are tiny—measured in parts per billion or trillion, which are far below what would be considered a medical dose” (Peterson, 2007). Even though the doses are not large in quantity, if we do not change some of the disposal and water treatment practices to handle medicines that passed from a lack of body absorption into wastewater, we can assume this problem will grow.
  6. One of the reasons why it may have taken so long for greater scrutiny into this problem is because the problem is considered “small” due to the fact that measurement of these pharmaceuticals is measured in the parts per billion. No matter what is being measured, when it comes to liquid volume measures that is not a lot per se, but consider that healthy people are advised to drink 8 glasses of water per day—this water adds up during repeated exposure, which is part of the problem.
  7. However, many scientists note that this is actually still a problem because as it is, many medications were designed to effective in very small doses over a long period of time, which is exactly what happens when we drink water from the same sources for the whole of our lives. In other words the “trace amount” argument that minimizes the problem is not valid, especially with medications designed to work on such long time scales and in small amounts.
  8. “Pharmaceuticals were found in 80 percent of the samples taken during a U.S. Geological Survey and EPA study of 139 steams in 30 states. Many of America’s wastewater treatment plants are not designed to remove pharmaceuticals and personal care products” (Peterson, 2007). It should be noted that in treatment plants, pharmaceuticals are not even broken down further since the treatment process do little to actually cause chemical reactions in the makeup of complex chemical structures such as those found in many medicines.
  9. The current evidence about the negative health effects of pharmaceuticals in the drinking water is the source of a great deal of conflict in the literature. Some studies, such as those conducted by Schwab et al. (2005) state that although there are positive results for many of the most dangerous metabolites in over 26 common medications, “these low ratios indicate that no appreciable human health risk exists from the presence of trace concentrations of these APIs in surface water and drinking water” (p. 296).
  10. Still, despite their findings that did not directly offer a correlation between human health and these trace elements, the authors of this study make it clear in their recommendations section that while this is not true now, if this problem progresses, we will see an increase in the number of health problems stemming from this. Others disagree….
  11. If fish that have been exposed to these doses of pharmaceuticals in the water are any indication of the depth of the problem, Americans might be seeing an increasing in effects from this problem. An EPA study cited abnormalities in male fish from Maryland, “that developed female eggs inside their sex organs; Inter-sex bass were also found in a study three years earlier” (Peterson, 2007 ) The authors noted that the potential causes included chemical compounds like pesticides, but also that are found in hormones.
  12. Those who lived downstream from the test site where the fish were found might be suffering some ill effects as well. According to a recent study of those who get their drinking from the same source as where these fish were found, “rates of cancer of the liver, gall bladder, ovaries and uterus were higher than the state average” (Peterson, 2007 ).