water quality experts and environmental advocates are increasingly concerned about another kind of water pollution: chemicals from prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications that get into lakes, rivers, and streams. Water also gets contaminated by perfume, cologne, skin lotions, and sunscreens that wash off people's skin. At this point, there's really no evidence of pharmaceutical and personal care products in the water harming people, but studies are showing adverse effects on aquatic life.
Our bodies metabolize only a fraction of most drugs we swallow. Most of the remainder is excreted in urine or feces (some is sweated out) and therefore gets into wastewater. An increasing number of medications are applied as creams or lotions, and the unabsorbed portions of those medications can contribute to the pollution problem when they get washed off. It's been calculated, for example, that one man's use of testosterone cream can wind up putting as much of the hormone into the water as the natural excretions from 300 men.
Health care institutions are another source of pharmaceutical water pollution... Nursing homes, though, have often been guilty of flushing medications down the toilet or drain after a patient dies or is transferred to another facility. Typically, they don't have the same kind of return arrangements as hospitals... Drug manufacturing also results in some pharmaceutical pollution..Agriculture is another major source.
A study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1999 and 2000 found measurable amounts of one or more medications in 80% of the water samples drawn from a network of 139 streams in 30 states. 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.
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. - https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/drugs-in-the-water
It’s usually recommended that emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (Truvada) be taken every day as PrEP.... The US Food and Drug Administration approved the use of emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide (Descovy) in male adults and adolescents as daily PrEP in 2019. - https://www.aidsmap.com/about-hiv/pre-exposure-prophylaxis-prep
If anyone has a clue as to what the effect of secretions of such into the water supply might be then they can add to this.
Not in my well!