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The Associated Press

What's in there?

Featured Topic | Posted 43 weeks 2 days ago

Is your drinking water full of Prozac and birth control?

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. The concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, far below the levels of a medical dose. And utilities insist their water is safe.

What's in your water? Should you be concerned?

Ben likes: Dirty water

Michael Fumento/Reason

Supposedly one of the most damning aspects of the chlorinated water-cancer connection is that to the extent the studies show any correlation at all, it is a "dose-response" correlation, meaning the more chlorinated water people drank the more likely they were to get cancer. But that's exactly what you'd expect if recall bias were a problem. In any event, University of California, Berkeley biologist Bruce Ames has noted that if there is any risk of cancer from chlorinated water at all, it is one-thirtieth that of a serving of peanut butter.

Such small risks look trivial amid the death tolls in Peru and elsewhere. And Enrique Ghersi hopes the Unit ed States can learn from his country's mistake. "We're ahead of the U.S.," Ghersi told me sarcastically. "And have returned to the Middle Ages as a result.

Joel likes: Was Gen. Ripper right?

Adam Dubbin/The Sequitur

So you may be asking yourself, "How do the drugs get into the water supply?" The answer is very simple: humans consume drugs, which are only partially metabolized then excreted in the urine (and also in perspiration), and then returned into the water cycle via metropolitan sewer services. Believe it or not, even after treatment some of these residual chemicals remain, albeit it in the parts per billion or trillion, well below the doses used clinically.

Perhaps this is just another side-effect of our pill-popping culture. But just because they exist in trace amounts does not mean that they are harmless. There have been some studies that suggest birth control hormones that have found their way into local environments have had adverse affects on fish, reptiles and amphibians. Unfortunately, there is no present data to determine what effects these trace chemicals might have.