How do medicines affect water quality

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Writer Andrew Urevig aurevig Ensia assistant editor and freelance science writer. Get Article. A recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an intergovernmental group whose member countries are mostly in Europe and North America, offers five recommendations for reducing the risk: 1. Improve understanding of the fate of pharmaceutical residues in the environment. Regulate pharmaceutical companies to ensure more responsible production.

Enact policies to halt the overuse of medications for both people and animals. Show your support for nonprofit journalism! Yes, I'll support Ensia! Post a Comment. You care about environmental issues. The drugs identified included a witches' brew of antibiotics, antidepressants, blood thinners, heart medications ACE inhibitors, calcium-channel blockers, digoxin , hormones estrogen, progesterone, testosterone , and painkillers.

Scores of studies have been done since. Other drugs that have been found include caffeine which, of course, comes from many other sources besides medications ; carbamazepine, an antiseizure drug; fibrates, which improve cholesterol levels; and some fragrance chemicals galaxolide and tonalide.

Sewage treatment plants are not currently designed to remove pharmaceuticals from water. Nor are the facilities that treat water to make it drinkable. Yet a certain amount of pharmaceutical contamination is removed when water gets treated for other purposes. On the other hand, treatment doesn't seem to have much effect on the levels of drugs such as carbamazepine and diclofenac a pain reliever.

Some aspects of sewage treatment may remove pharmaceuticals from the water, but as a result, concentrations in sludge increase. Some of that sludge is used as fertilizer, so the pharmaceuticals are getting into the environment in another way.

Drinking-water treatment may also get rid of some pharmaceutical contamination. Chlorine is used to kill bacteria and other pathogens, but it also seems to degrade or remove acetaminophen, codeine, and the antibiotic sulfathiazole.

Still, there's really not much question that some pharmaceutical pollution persists and does wind up in the water we drink. In , the Associated Press published a series of investigative articles about pharmaceutical contamination in drinking water.

The journalists uncovered test results that showed the water supplies for 24 major metropolitan areas had detectable levels of pharmaceuticals. Scientists from the Southern Nevada Water Authority and other organizations reported results in from a study analyzing drinking water from 19 treatment plants.

Their tests found antidepressants, antipsychotics, antibiotics, beta blockers, and tranquilizers, although only in trace amounts and far below levels thought to have an effect on humans. It's possible that there's a cumulative effect on people from even tiny amounts of these and other pharmaceuticals in drinking water, but this hasn't been proven. And perhaps vulnerable populations pregnant women, people with disabilities are affected, although that's also unproven.

In contrast to the uncertainty about human health effects, there's quite a bit of evidence for pharmaceuticals in the water affecting aquatic life, particularly fish. Numerous studies have shown that estrogen and chemicals that behave like it have a feminizing effect on male fish and can alter female-to-male ratios. Sources of estrogen include birth control pills and postmenopausal hormone treatments, as well as the estrogen that women produce naturally and excrete.

Intersex fish — creatures with both male and female sex characteristics — have been found in heavily polluted sections of the Potomac River. Studies of fish upstream and downstream of wastewater treatment plants have found more female and intersex fish downstream from the plants, presumably because of the higher estrogen levels in the downstream water. Other research has uncovered popular antidepressant medications concentrated in the brain tissue of fish downstream from wastewater treatment plants.

Limit bulk purchases. Volume discounts make the price attractive, but big bottles of unused pills create an opportunity for medications to end up in the water.

Use drug take-back programs. A federal law went into effect in that makes it easier for those programs to be organized at a local level, so you may see one in your community. The federal Drug Enforcement Agency has held two national drug take-back days and is likely to organize some more. Do not flush unused medicines or pour them down the drain. This is the very least you can do. But the FDA advises that certain powerful narcotic pain medications should be flushed because of concerns about accidental overdose or illicit use unless you can find a drug take-back program that will accept them.

Be careful about how you throw medications into the trash. Medications thrown into the trash end up being incinerated or buried in landfills, which is preferable to flushing them or pouring them down the drain. If you put them in the trash, remove them from the packaging, crush them, and seal them in a plastic bag with some water. What we do know is that every time you take a shower, you wash whatever of these products you use down the drain where they enter the wastewater treatment or private on-lot sewage systems.

As with health care PPCPs, only limited quantities of these chemicals are removed by today's treatment systems. When you go swimming, these products are washed directly into the surface waters. Pesticides, plasticizers, brominated flame retardants, and other similar products enter the environment by various pathways including being placed in the soil, volatilizing into the atmosphere, and being discharged into streams.

In few cases is there any quality control or deliberate treatment of these chemicals. Until very recently chemical diagnostic technology was not able to detect these chemicals in water because the concentrations were below detectable limits.

Now that it is possible to detect parts-per-trillion ppt or nanograms per liter, we are frequently finding one or more of these chemicals in our water. Even though these concentrations seem very small and insignificant there are an extremely large number of molecules of these products in the water we drink. The Box on this page may help you understand this concept. They found 82 of 95 antibiotics, non-prescription drugs, steroids, and hormones in at least one sample.

Eighty percent of streams sampled had more than one contaminant. Seventy-five percent had two or more. The two estrogen compounds found in the highest concentrations were estriol 0. Acetaminophen, commonly known as Tylenol, is a much used over-the-counter drug. A common dose of Tylenol is milligrams mg. Acetaminophen has been detected in drinking water at concentrations of 0. This concentration is equal to 0. This is also equivalent to finding 48 billion 48,,, molecules of acetaminophen in a cup of water.

So the next time you have your morning cup of coffee, consider what else is in that cup. There is no doubt these chemicals are beginning to show up in our drinking water supplies. The important question is "So what? There is not a great deal of credible information to show that we humans are being affected, health wise, by these very low concentrations of chemicals in our drinking water.

There is, however, growing evidence that some of these chemicals disrupt the endocrine balance in various ecological species endocrine disruptors and can adversely affect fish and other aquatic species living in the contaminated waters. Some of these chemicals interfere with or mimic natural hormones and disrupt reproduction, development, and behavior of fish and other organisms. Feminization of male fish has been observed in waters with estrogen concentrations in the 0. No one knows at what concentrations similar impacts will be detected in humans the research has not been done.

It is relatively easy to understand how drugs that have been flushed down a toilet could get into the water supply Note the flow path from "your home" to "my home". Wastewater and Water Treatment Systems.

A major portion of these chemicals are removed some as high as Chimchirian et al. Data from a wastewater treatment plant that applies microfiltration followed by reverse osmosis advanced treatment to a portion of their treated water still shows detectable concentrations of many PPCPs in the effluent. Treated wastewaters are usually discharged to local streams and flow downstream to the next town where the water is treated before being piped to your home.

Drugs that are disposed of in the trash should be expected to be retained in a landfill where the trash is deposited. However, much of the waste deposited in landfills is organic and, over time, organic waste decomposes and produces leachate.

In modern, properly designed and operated landfills, the landfill leachate is collected and treated; but the treatment processes do not completely remove the PPCPs in the leachate before being discharged to local surface waters. PPCPs in treated wastewater that is irrigated onto forest or cropland will generally be captured in the soil profile where soil microbes and soil chemical reactions will breakdown the PPCPs into quite harmless products.

There is a far more subtle and maybe more important pathway from a PPCP user to the water supply. When a doctor prescribes medicine s , you ingest these drugs.