Drugs in Drinking Water Threaten Your Health
By Peter Alderton
Is it possible that there are drugs in your drinking water? Surely it’s not possible that when you drink a glass of water you’re drinking drugs? Lets take a look at the possibility that there are drugs in drinking water in the US.
Perhaps we can start with a quote from the Ralph Nader Institute. “U.S. drinking water contains more than 2,100 toxic chemicals that can cause cancer.”
Now of course “toxic chemicals” may not include drugs, but it’s a pretty scary place to start the discussion. However there is plenty of other evidence that there are drugs found in drinking water in mainstream water supplies. Particularly antibiotics.
Strangely, some of the evidence for drugs in drinking water comes from a high school student. In 1999 a West Virginia high school student decided to do a science project for school by testing for levels of antibiotics in rivers. Ashley Mulroy tested for the antibiotics penicillin, tetracycline and vancomycin in water by taking samples over a 10 week period from the Ohio river and having them tested. The antibiotics were found in all samples.
So she decided to test tap water for antibiotics, and got the same result.
Lets take a quote from the Environmental Health Perspectives website. “Roughly 100 pharmaceuticals have now been identified in rivers, lakes, and coastal waters throughout Europe and the United States.”
How about from the MSNBC website: “Traces of 56 human and veterinary pharmaceuticals or their byproducts – like the active ingredients in medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems – have been detected in Philadelphia’s drinking water.”
Or from USA Today: “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.”
Municipal standards for drinking water require that germs be removed from drinking water before it is safe for general use, however there are no standards for removal of drugs, and no requirement that drugs are either tested for, or removed.
Clearly there are drugs found in drinking water in the US, the question is how much, and what risks does this pose to your health if you drink unfiltered water?
Who knows?
There is no clear evidence either way, however it seems clear that the presence of drugs in drinking water in the US makes us all a part of a huge experiment on the effects of drinking small quantities of pharmaceuticals over an extended period of time.
What can you do to protect yourself and your family from any risks to your health by drinking water contaminated by drugs? Drink pure water.
Bottled water isn’t pure water, in many cases it’s no better than tap water, and can be worse.
But there are well recognized ways to purify your drinking water of drugs as well as those other “2100 toxic chemicals” that the Ralph Nader Institute tells us may be in that glass of tap water you’re about to drink now, or to cook with, or shower with.
But only the worlds very best water filters are good enough to remove such hazards as drugs in drinking water, or hormones, or lead, or pesticides, or herbicides or, well I think you get the picture. So get yourself the best water filter that modern technology can produce and be safe from those drugs found in drinking water that you may be using now.
