The media now warns that our drinking water is contaminated with multiple pharmaceuticals.
An Associated Press survey of the water supplies of 28 major metropolitan areas found small amounts of prescription and over-the-counter drugs in all but three of those areas.
And even those three may have some contamination, since each metropolitan area tests for a different list of possible drugs. The leader happened to be Philadelphia, with 56 drugs or drug byproducts found in a sample of its drinking water.
Pharmaceuticals enter our water supplies when the drugs we take pass through our bodies and are flushed down the toilet. Our present methods for water treatment do not remove all these drugs, and they are unlikely to do so in the future.
Foreign waters, too, have been found to be contaminated. Tests have discovered more than 100 different pharmaceuticals in the North Sea, in Swiss lakes, and in rivers, reservoirs, and streams throughout the world.
In spite of all this, I will continue to speak out against the drinking of bottled water, not only because of its exorbitant cost but also because of the mountains of plastic litter it leaves behind.
For now, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals in U.S. drinking water are truly tiny: They're present in parts per billion. Such concentrations, which might be compared to a sugar cube stirred into an Olympic-sized swimming pool, are too small to produce any immediate effects.
Nonetheless, it is possible that the cumulative effects of myriad combinations of drugs may have some adverse effect over a period of many years.
Home filtration systems would seem to be an obvious solution to the problem, but these are not proven to eliminate these particular contaminants. Bottled water? Besides the objections I've already raised above, a large fraction of the bottled water we buy is prepared by the "purification" of tap water; and these products are not treated specifically to remove pharmaceuticals, nor are they tested for such substances.
Even I, however, might be tempted to tell my grandchildren to drink bottled water (it's too late for me to avoid any long-term dangers of such contaminants), if rigorous tests of these products could prove them to be pharmaceutical-free.
Short of improving our health with better diet and exercise to partly overcome our seeming love affair with medications, what can we do about this pollution?
At least two strategies for partially reducing pharmaceutical contaminants in our water come to mind. First, do not flush outdated or otherwise unused medications down the toilet or sink.
Second, the government should establish limits on the use of antibiotics in healthy farm animals, since such use not only taints our waterways but also spawns dangerous, drug-resistant strains of bacteria.