Posted on 04/02/2007 9:27:52 PM PDT by neverdem
Residues of birth control pills, antidepressants, painkillers, shampoos and a host of other compounds are finding their way into the nation’s waterways, and they have public health and environmental officials in a regulatory quandary.
On the one hand, there is no evidence the traces of the chemicals found so far are harmful to human beings. On the other hand, it would seem cavalier to ignore them.
The pharmaceutical and personal care products, or P.P.C.P.’s, are being flushed into the nation’s rivers from sewage treatment plants or leaching into groundwater from septic systems. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, researchers have found these substances, called “emerging contaminants,” almost everywhere they have looked for them.
Most experts say their discovery reflects better sensing technology as much as anything else. Still, as Hal Zenick of the agency’s office of research and development put it in an e-mail message, “there is uncertainty as to the risk to humans.”
In part, that is because the extent and consequences of human exposure to these compounds, especially in combination, are “unknown,” the Food and Drug Administration said in a review issued in 2005. And aging and increasingly medicated Americans are using more of these products than ever.
So officials who deal with these compounds have the complex task of balancing reassurance that they take the situation seriously with reassurance that there is probably nothing to worry about. As a result, scientists in several government and private agencies are devising new ways to measure and analyze the compounds, determine their prevalence in the environment, figure out where they come from, how they move, where they end up and if they have any effects.
In many cases, the compounds enter the water when people excrete them or wash them away in the shower. But some are flushed or washed...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Bush’s Fault
What a revolting thought. Wonder just how MUCH is there? Parts per million or billion?
Gross. I think I’ll start buying spring water.
Well, the kids licked toads to get high. Now I guess they’ll drink from the toilet like my dogs.
Babies Who Don't Respond To Their Names May Be At Risk For Autism Or Other Disorders
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Where do you suppose that the ingredients to make them came from anyway? If you think you recycle, you are a rank amateur compared to mother earth.
Anyone want to open a business with me? We can sell offsets to people that pollute our water with birth control, antidepressants and painkiller laden urine. People mustn't feel anymore guilty of this... this... this... whatever... Pharma-Footprint than they feel over their Carbon Footprint.
I don't understand why ignoring them would be 'cavalier'.
Muslims killed over 3000 New Yorkers and the NYT is cavalierly ignoring them....
I'll go for either placebo or nocebo effects.
LOL!
If you turn them in for “safe disposal”, where would you expect that they be sent to?
lol. Maybe, if the concentrations were high enough. But, if so, maybe male homosexuality could be lessened by having males only drink "pure" water, without estrogens.
not back to the watershed but rather treated as medical waste.
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