Study Finds Drugs in Some U.S. Water Supplies

Are there drugs in your drinking water? There may be, according to an investigation by the Association Press.



The wire service found trace amounts of prescription drugs in the water supplies of two dozen major metropolitan areas coast-to-coast.



And while they're in trace amounts, some question whether our water is as safe as it should be.



The AP says it conducted hundreds of interviews and pored through thousands of documents over a 5-month period.



They found antibiotics, seizure medicine, mood stabilizers and even sex hormones in some drinking water. But the compounds were in trace amounts. Parts per billion or trillion.



“A part per trillion is about the equivalent of an aspirin pill in an Olympic sized swimming pool,” said Benjamin Grumbles, Assistant Administrator for Environmental Protection Agency



Grumbles says the contamination is a concern but not a safety threat.

“America’s water supplies continue to be among the safest in the world."



The AP investigation found trace contamination in more than two dozen of the nation's biggest cities.



When we use medicine, most passes through our bodies and is flushed back into the water supply.



Water suppliers say there's no practical way right now to scrub those drugs out.



Tom Jacobus of Washington Aqueduct said, “The current treatment techniques were not designed to meet these chemicals. They were designed to meet the range of biologic and other chemistry that we see in the water that EPA regulates.”



Tom Curtis of American Water Works Association said, “What has really changed is our ability to detect these compounds at ever lower and lower concentrations. You might say that having a larger telescope does not mean there are more stars in the sky.”



Still health and environmental groups say it's a warning sign.



“We know many of these drugs are active at very, very low levels.” said Jane Houlihan with Environmental Working Group. "The health effects of these low doses of mixtures of drugs over a lifetime just flat-out haven't been studied. We just don't know what it means."

 

The EPA says it's looking into new technology to flush out these trace chemicals. But in the meantime it urges consumers not to use their toilets to flush away un-used drugs.