The Threat of Meds in the Water
What do most people do with old or unwanted medications? They flush them down the toilet and, thereby, contribute to growing hazards from those pharmaceuticals and other human ingested chemical substances to living organisms -- both human and otherwise -- that depend upon fresh or salt water and their aquatic ecosystems for survival.
Increasing reports of bisexual fish (with both male and female sex organs) or fish with other changes that are diminishing their sexes and species -- from the Potomac River to Boulder, CO -- are making scientists address the apparent connection between pharmaceutical pollution and newly emerging types of degradations to species' vitality and reproductive viability. Unused pills or liquid meds that are flushed down the toilet, coupled with metabolized or unmetabolized medications that are eliminated naturally from humans, enter public sewage treatment plants or private septic systems. Those wastewater treatment systems are not designed to remove those chemical contaminants. Scientists from around the world are reporting that some of the drugs that pass through humans without being absorbed are being bio-concentrated in aquatic animals. Pharmaceutical residues from hormone inhibitors in agricultural products, hormone supplements, birth-control products, and other medications can be extremely disruptive to the endocrine and/or reproductive systems of amphibians, fish, shellfish, and numerous other types of wildlife, including humans. Lots of parents are buying milk without hormones, but what about the water they drink or that is used in food preparation everywhere?
"Even at extremely low levels, ibuprofen, steroids and antibiotics -- a class of drugs that helps reduce the development of scar tissue -- block fin regeneration in fish. According to a report by the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, a worldwide network of scientists and scientific institutions, and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, more than 200 species -- aquatic and terrestrial -- are known
or suspected to have experienced adverse reactions to such endocrine disruptors as estrogen and its synthetic mimics."*
While medical complexes, high-density residences, and large total-care, nursing, or assisted-living facilities located along rivers pose the most obvious concerns, preventive action in a wide variety of areas must ensure that nonpoint pollution from medications is reduced, prevented, and monitored. Certainly chemicals eliminated in the urine of humans are harder to control,but each and every one of us can consciously dispose of medications responsibly. Until a large-scale procedure is established to accept and deal with human and pet meds, the preferred method for disposal is to render the medication unappealing to anyone who might discover it and to dilute it. Take a pill bottle, pour some water into it to dissolve the pills, add a small amount of paper towel or kitty litter to absorb the liquid, reseal, and throw the bottle into the garbage. Liquid medications should be handled in the same fashion.
We need everyone to take that simple step and to protect and conserve our precious water resources. Without water, there is no life as we know it.
*From "Drugging the Waters," Fall 2006 issue of OnEarth magazine, published by the National Resource Defense Council.
