On Demand
Water Hazard
Monday, March 10, 2008
Associated Press national investigative editor Rick Pienciak and AP national writer Jeff Donn discuss their investigation of pharmaceuticals in drinking water.
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Funny, after reading this 2002 AP story on the exact same subject we began drinking bottled water from remote sources (bottling it ourselves when we can).
http://www.antibiotic-alternatives.com/medicated_waterways.htm
Is there no regualtion in this country???
Why is it so hard to have clean water??
Of course we should worry about this?
Now I know why I'm crying more and watching Oprah!
It's because of the Estogen in the water.
Recommended water purifier? Brittas are a joke...
Excellent article - kudos to the AP for publishing a lengthy piece on a subject of great importance. But I am angry about the collateral damage from Prozac Nation.
Maybe this is Pharma's way of finally making prescription medication affordable and available to all - by polluting everyone's drinking water with them.
This is certainly an issue worth investigating, but with all due respect to your guests, the way this issue is covered will probably blow the issue far out of proportion and scare people needlessly. As a scientist, I know firsthand that just because you can detect something doesn't mean it has any practical affect on health. A scientist should be consulted to talk about the relevance of these levels.
Call EPA and your water companies if you care. Numbers here: (NJ below)
http://yosemite.epa.gov/ogwdw/ccr.nsf/New+Jersey?OpenView
so what do suggest we do? boil water? bottled water?
Chris -- if you are a scientist you may know that the tons of antibiotics given to cows throughout their life cycles, to ward off disease, are reducing the effectiveness of antibiotics on humans, with the prediction that antibiotics will not work in the near-medium future.
Does boiling water help. Would you have children that drink water switch to bottled water?
Is this new news? I remember seeing a tv show a while back about the levels of pharmaceuticals that are found downstream from nursing homes, and the impact that these drugs were having on fish and animal life in those environments.
The researchers (and the City) should also be looking at the synergistic effects of 65 different pharmaceuticals on people. Scientists in the field know that even two or three drugs together can produce amplified or undesired side-effects. Even though the amounts are small, they are probably lifetime exposure. Add all this to all the other pollutants we are getting from our food (pesticides), water and air and now we're really talking about health effects and cancers. It's similar to the hundreds of toxics and carcinogens in the air after 9/11 / WTC. Nobody wanted to tell the public because they didn't want to be sued. So the public's health is sacrificed. This happens over and over.
It is a crime that DEP keeps this info secret. A friend of mine who has developed an inexpensive means of testing water for whole particle toxicity, using live tetramitus flagellates, had been measuring Croton reservoir system for years, finding that the water had toxic levels after rainstorms (more runoff from the land and I guess sewers). DEP didn't want to know from him. They are keeping things secret. We need more light. Thanks for this program.
If these guys didn't do the testing -- nor did they pay anybody else do the testing -- why would these wire reporters possibly be validating the levels of medication in the water???
The levels we're talking about are CRITICAL. For example, chronic exposure to very low level radiation or toxic chemicals has been shown to actually increase life span in lab animals.
With all due respect, the facts of this finding are not particularly alarming.
First, all pharmaceuticals produced are chemicals (or variants thereof) that the body already produces. If they were entirely foreign, the body would not have receptors for them and they would produce no effect.
Second, at a level of one part per billion, I would have to drink 250,000 KG of water to recieve an amount of asprin to equal one tablet. The argument that this is cululative is also absurd because the body has sophisticated toxin removal processes that can remove these chemical much faster than then they would accumulate.
This is simply another example of alarmist journalism.
Do these trace pharmaceuticals have the same cumulative effect as xray radiation?
I see the first comment refers to finding out about this in 2002 - I read in 2006 about a professor at U of CT @ Storrs who was monitoring
pharmaceuticals in river water & she was finding negative effects - & one place of monitoring was just downstream from a retirement home....
Oh those drug companies!
brian,
have heard about rocket fuel also found in water supply any testing on this as well??
I'm wondering who underwrote this study...the guests keep saying "we"...who, specifically, are the "we"?
How do we dispose of our own unused medicine?
What can we do as consumers besides reverse osmosis? What can be done in terms of legislation to address this problem?
There are professional water testing companies everywhere (they do all the pools, among other tasks).
Wanna talk about a useful BL Mob project (unless the News Dept. was willing to spend the grand)?
Have your tap water tested...
The word "bioactive" was mentioned.We know that lead is bioactive. CRT monitors and TVs each contain several pounds of lead. Have there been any studies concerning the possible effects of disposal of CRT monitors and TVs upon the wate sup0ply?
Dear Brian,
I have been listening to your show for many years and quite enjoy it. Having only investigative reporters and no credible researchers who might have some reasonable scientific perspective will only make this a topic to incite the anxious and agitate the paranoid. The journalists keep quoting in vivo studies, municipal studies and pharmacologic studies that only serve to stoke panic. Give us some perspective! Where is the public health emergency here?
Thank you.
James F. Marion MD
Associate Clinical Prof of Medicine
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
C'mon people! Get a grip! And there is also particles of soot and chemical residue in the air we breathe - you cannot live in a bubble!
Just go out in the world and live and be happy.
We would like to install undersink filtration that addresses this issue. We have a small kitchen and limited space for this appliance. What type of system is recommended for us? Ours Is a co-op building with over 400 units. Perhaps we could address the problem with a central reverse osmosis or other system. What recommendations do you have and how might we present this to our board? Thank you.
following on the suggestion to use reverse osmosis as a means of filtering meds, keep in mind that each gallon of water filtered wastes 3-9 gallons of tap water, an increasingly scarce resource. We are already having to desalinate ocean water to provide enough for a growing global population.
Last year there was a big AP news and BBC news headline about high levels of Prozac and other anti-depressants found in Londons drinking water. The contamination being from the same origin i.e. human secretion. Please comment!
"I carry around a glass jar for drinking water"
ROFL.
Bottled water is highly regulated...the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates bottled water as a packaged food product through stringent standards for safety, quality, production, labeling, and identity. Also, state governmental agencies regulate bottled water and International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) members adhere to additional standards through the IBWA Model Code, which are verified through annual, unannounced plant inspections by an independent, third-party organization.
And when water is from a municipal source, it's additionally treated via carbon filtration, reverse osmosis and ozonation.
I hope that during this week's follow-up Friday we will have hear from some responsible, un-involved scientists about this subject.
I'd like to hear if there are any realistic risks to the detected levels of pharmaceuticals.
I wrote the story, referenced in this thread, about pharmaceuticals in Connecticut water. I’ve spent the last two years looking closely at the virtues and perils of both bottled and tap water. Some things I’ve learned: it turns out there are some good (non-marketing!) reasons to drink bottled water in certain parts of the country, for certain at-risk groups. But bottled water takes a significant social and environmental toll. Reverse osmosis units will remove pharmaceuticals, but they use a lot of energy, waste much water, and must be properly maintained ($$). The bottom line is that if we, as individuals and as a nation, don’t take care of tap water, we will only be drinking bottled water – and that’s the worst of all possible outcomes. If you want to read more on this (and learn what you can do to protect municipal water supplies), check out my forthcoming book, Bottlemania: How Water Went On Sale and Why We Bought It.
the obvious solution: only drink beer
This is NOT news. Salon published this exact story 6 years ago.
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/10/25/drugs_water/
I think many miss the point that bottled water grew over the last 10 years as an alternative to other packaged beverage products (mostly at the expense of carbonated soft drinks)...bottled water is a healthy alternative beverage product, and the industry has been growing at double (or close to double) digits for a long time, but the total number of individual packages of beverages have only grown at the rate of population growth. People are drinking less tap water because of real and perceived taste, quality, contamination issues. Bottled water is a sympton of consumer's desire for healthy beverage alternatives. Presumably, the Park Slope Co-op will sell less healthy beverage alternatives; and it's members aren't going to drink more tap water because of their decision to ban bottled water from their store.
Well said Bruce!
I agree totally with Chris and Rob, as a physician I think this issue is being way overblown. I read the original AP article, they quote various scientists, but where are the studies showing documenting their claims? My issue is with WNYC and the Brian Lehrer show, as with the Food Allergy debacle with Meredith Broussard on Leonard Lopate, why weren't there any scientists on the panel? Couldn't you find a single toxicologist or biologist in New York City to give an opinion? Why is WNYC considering reporters as scientific experts? Where are your fact checkers? I rely on WNYC to give me good, solid news and not stoop to the level of alarmist journalism. This is the second time you've disappointed me, I hope there won't be a third.
It seems to me that, while the issue of drugs in drinking water is a legitimate issue, the way it is being presented is in the style of the worst of yellow journalism and intended to create public panic.
Listening to your piece today and the piece on PBS tonight, I was impressed with the statement that the problem should be elevated to a high level because "...pharmaceuticals were designed to interacgt with your body." I acknowledge that as true. But I am far more concerned about those substances (e.g. mercury, cadmium, etc.) that were not "designed" to interact with my body. When the FDA approves a drug, studies demonstrating safety and efficacy have to be performed. Safety trumps efficacy...primum non nocere. So, at least we know that drugs approved by the FDA are safe. And given their pico amounts in the ground water...do we even have to be worried about them? But we do have to worry about those substances that haven't been proven to be safe at any level.
But I guess journalism these days is in the Hearst tradition. Remember the Maine!
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