AP: Drugs show up in Americans' Water

AP: Drugs show up in Americans' Water

www.usatoday.com

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.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 9-3-2008 by DimensionalDetective]

Yikes...Now THIS is alarming...I'm normally not on the terrorism bandwagon ( save for our gov carrying out false flag operations), but this poses a real risk IMO. IF pharmaceuticals can make it into the mainstream water supplies of major cities that easy.....You know where I'm going with this. A little creepy.

www.usatoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I wouldn't worry too much, those concentrations mentioned are extremely minute (p.s. your link no longer works) I'd say you would breath in higher doses on a trip to the pharmacy, but that's my uneducated guess...

Reminds me a bit of this -

WASHINGTON - Researchers have figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city’s sewer plant.
[snip]
Oregon State University scientists tested 10 unnamed American cities for remnants of drugs, both legal and illegal, from wastewater streams. They were able to show that they could get a good snapshot of what people are taking.

link

There was a thread on ATS about it somewhere.

The amounts are minute... but one must take into account how much water you are exposed to. We use it to drink, cook and wash ourselves. What are the effects when you are taking a hot shower and actually inhaling these things? What about when your taking a hot shower and your pours open and you absorb these things through the skin? Now what about when you drink it? What about when you use it to cook and combine these things with all the drugs put into the food supply?

Yeah your right...nothing to worry about at all. If there was certainly "they" would tell us! /sarcasm

Edit to add: If the OP's link does not work you can check it out HERE as well. Nice find DD, I was getting ready to post it myself until I did a search

[edit on 9-3-2008 by MrWendal]

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


There's definitely birth control in my town's tap water. The water board recently did an investigation into the aquifer and the town's water.

We are definitely contaminated...

Thank God I am now on well water.

The danger of contamination is high no matter how much water you use. I personally do not want any chemicals in my body (other than one I CHOOSE to put there).

Its rather messed up to think men could become sterile due to drinking tap water. Well, its quite possible.

I'm definately drinking a lot more water.

8 large flasks a day minimum.

Woah,
thats some messed up water right there.

Mod Note: One Line Responses -- Please Review

[edit on 9-3-2008 by chissler]

I wish someone would or could postulate as to what the long term effects of drinking 6-8 glasses of this low-concentrate water would be.

I drink from my kitchen sink tap pretty regularly, I don't like to spend money on bottled water, but now I'm thinking it might be time to reconsider that.

While it appears that these levels could be completely harmless, I really do wish someone with a respected background could give us at least a theoretical report on what 5-10 years of frequent tainted water ingestion would be.

God, this makes me terrible nervous about our future health.

What the hell is wrong with us?

reply to post by MrWendal


I was wondering why i felt high everytime i took a shower jk but all jokes aside i think this could be very serious. What i find interesting is how they are saying the drugs get into the water. I mean seriously is it possible that it would even show up from people peeing in there toilets and flushing it down. That seems impossible to me. To show up in that many cities and then the specific sex hormone they found in the water in california, I mean how many people are on sex hormones. I just dont think its possible to show up from us. I think some one is dumping it into our water supplies thats the only way i can see it showing up in tests. but thats just my opinion

...... this some screwed up shi..I found this on AOL 4 MCKennalite & all
I wonder if bottled water is any safer, I pray so.....

researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies — which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public — have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.

"We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Members of the AP National Investigative Team reviewed hundreds of scientific reports, analyzed federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study sites and treatment plants and interviewed more than 230 officials, academics and scientists. They also surveyed the nation's 50 largest cities and a dozen other major water providers, as well as smaller community water providers in all 50 states.

Here are some of the key test results obtained by the AP:

--Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds.

--Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

--Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

--A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco's drinking water.

--The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

--Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.

The situation is undoubtedly worse than suggested by the positive test results in the major population centers documented by the AP.

The federal government doesn't require any testing and hasn't set safety limits for drugs in water. Of the 62 major water providers contacted, the drinking water for only 28 was tested. Among the 34 that haven't: Houston, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, Phoenix, Boston and New York City's Department of Environmental Protection, which delivers water to 9 million people.

Some providers screen only for one or two pharmaceuticals, leaving open the possibility that others are present.

The AP's investigation also indicates that watersheds, the natural sources of most of the nation's water supply, also are contaminated. Tests were conducted in the watersheds of 35 of the 62 major providers surveyed by the AP, and pharmaceuticals were detected in 28.


[edit on 9-3-2008 by Manifest]

In reply to the post above, there are probably much more people on hormones than you'd think. Transsexuals and transgender individuals use them to regulate their system, since their bodies don't produce the hormones for their body type.
In any case, this seems more of a possible problem than Fluoride. I guess this means that water management needs to be stepped up to better regulate water clarity.

reply to post by xHADEEZx


Every woman who takes birth control. Every woman who takes estrogen which is routinely prescribed for hormone replacement (estrogen keeps cholesterol down, so post menopausal women take it to help keep thier levels balanced). Every person who eats commercially produced meat which is pumped full of growth hormone and antibiotics. Every person who...well, you get my point. Millions upon millions.

We have a well (in Ohio) that is 150 years old and my partner drinks only this water. He says the tap water tastes like chemicals. I drink the tap water because it's nice and cold from the tap and after having lived on an island for 12 years, the taste is really delicious to me. (Islands have notoriously horrible tasting water, usually.) It's illegal to have well water pumped into your house if you have city municipal water as well. I've never understood why, aside from the fact that you have to pay for municipal water. We don't currently have a pump on our well, but have to pull it up the old fashioned way with a bucket. Good for upper body strength, but sometimes a pain.

I've read that tap water routinely tests more pure than bottled water and is 1000th of the price. But it's hard to believe when I read things like this.

I don't know what I'd do if I lived in a big city. Buy water, I suppose. But I think that would get expensive quickly.

reply to post by Manifest

Thanks for doing that manifest. That's certainly equally terrifying news. I do suppose, however, that some of us have more pressing things to focus our worries on, but, none-the-less, this certainly isn't something that I want to have nagging at me in the back of my mind.

[sc]Quit complaining, one minute complaining prescription drugs are too expensive and now your complaining when you're getting them for free? You should think yourselves lucky you've got water, some poor sod in Africa would drink your waste and you worry about drugs in your water...I mean c'mon how the hell you smoke em when they're wet anyway.[/sc]

Bloody lazy people flushing their old meds down the Khazi...All our bad habits catching up with us.

I have a one line post....

Putting doubt into peoples mind over tap water is very easy.

"Bottled" waters are usually nothing more than tap water that has been filtered a few more times. I can not see it being much better than tap water. Also bottled waters can have more fluoride in it than your standard tap water so it is more of a case of "pick your poison".

reply to post by Now_Then


I think you are making a major logical error. How can you focus on how much?

Wouldn't the real question be:

How the heck did it get there?

reply to post by xHADEEZx


I have to agree the explanation sounds far fetched. Recycled human and animal waste in the water - not likely -

Pharmaceutical company waste and possible population and mind control experiments - that i can believe.

This is absurd and outrageous.

Reminds me of the Batman Begins plot except - gasp! - It's effing real!!! and no microwave evaporator gun needed - although on second thought we are being bombarded with microwaves just for extra fun and abuse!!.

I wonder what life would be like if I wasn't being drugged, poisoned and mind controlled 24 hours a day my whole life????????

I can't even begin to imagine.



[edit on 9-3-2008 by CyberTruth]

Does anyone recall about people joking about how our daughters are starting puberty younger due to the hormones in the chicken? Well it seems like it’s not all that funny now since we have hormones ( and other stuff) in out drinking water now.

Researchers have stated that the amounts are extremely low but are worried about the long term exposure of these chemicals to the population and its effects on elderly and pregnant women.

Another concern is the chance of lowering the affectability of antibiotics on people who are sick as well.

The article states there is a process of treating the water for these chemicals but its expensive and for every gallon of treated water there is one gallon of polluted water which I guess the governments of the world do not wish to do due to the non abundance of fresh water.

How should we deal with this issue since it is us ourselves that are putting these chemicals in the water by it bypassing our bodily systems and our consuming rate of these chemicals seemingly getting higher each year?

Previous poster have stated get your water from a well or bottled water but from the article I read it seems that traces still exist or for well water may be worse:- news.yahoo.com...

I find it amusing that everything we humans do seem to turn around and bite us on the butt….

Well,WWAJD--"What Would Alex Jones Do"
I know!
Buy a Berkey water filtration system and fight the New Wolrd Order.
And then all will be right with the world.