Living Longer Green News Updates

Report Found Valley Drinking Water Tainted With Drugs
Posted: March 10, 2008 06:51 PM MST

Could the latest health problem in Southern Nevada come from your kitchen sink?

A new study finds drinking water is tainted with trace amounts of drugs.

Action News Meteorologist John Goulet breaks down the details of the report.

You will not just find boaters and fish in Nevada's Lake Mead.

Lake Mead is a huge reservoir and drinking water source for much of the Southwest.

It also contains trace levels of birth control pills, steroids, narcotics, and more.

One person said, "This is scary."

Another person Action News spoke with said, "I am shocked."

An Associated Press investigation found traces of drugs in the water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas, including Las Vegas.

All kinds of medications were found in the water, from anti-depressants, to antibiotics, to heart medicine.

Dr. David Carpenter from the State University of New York at Albany said, "There is no way that having pharmaceutical drugs in the water supply is going to be of any benefit."

Here is how it happens.

Our bodies do not absorb all of the medicine we take, so some of it is excreted and flushed into our sewers.

Sewage treatment plants do not remove the drugs.

The treated water then flows into rivers and lakes and then to drinking water plants which typically do not screen for drugs.

Scientists are seeing effects on animals.

Male fish have developed female traits and have reproductive problems, possibly from birth control pills.

But can it harm you?

J.C. Davis from the Southern Nevada Water Authority explained, "You would have to drink about 85,000 glasses of water every single day for the rest of your life in order to maybe have a health effect."

The pharmaceutical industry points out the levels of drugs detected are minuscule.

The EPA says, while it is concerned about the issue the agency points out American water is still some of the safest in the world.

Davis said, "Our water quality here in Southern Nevada. Hardness aside, nobody likes the calcium in our water. But that aside we have some of the best water in the country."

If you are worried about contamination, experts say you should buy a reverse osmosis filtration system.

Traditional filters are not designed to clear away drugs.

Stay tuned to Action News as we watch for further developments in this report.

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Drugs in your drinking water? No one knows

By JEREMY REDMON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/11/08

Two of the Atlanta region's biggest water suppliers say they don't know if there are drugs in the drinking water they serve the public because the federal government does not require such testing.

"It would be an additional cost, and no water utility out there has money lying around to do stuff they are not required to do," said Janet Ward, spokeswoman for the Atlanta Watershed Management Department, which serves drinking water to 1.2 million people in Atlanta, Sandy Springs and Fulton County.

WHAT WAS FOUND IN ATLANTA'S WATER?

The Associated Press report says the following pharmaceuticals were found in the Atlanta area's drinking water supply, though it was not specific where they were found:

Caffeine: found in coffee, tea and soda. Used in medicine chiefly as a nervous system stimulant
Sulfamethoxazole: used to treat infections, especially of the urinary tract
Diltiazem: used to treat hypertension, angina or heart failure
Acetaminophen: pain reliever and fever reducer
Trimethoprim: used in the treatment of urinary tract infections and pneumonia
Cotinine: the principal metabolite of nicotine widely used as an indicator of recent exposure to nicotine.
Paraxanthine: Like caffeine, paraxanthine is a central nervous system stimulant. Its potency is roughly equal to that of caffeine and is likely involved in mediating the effects of caffeine itself.

Likewise, a water official in Cobb County said that utility, which serves 800,000 people, doesn't test because it doesn't have to. Their comments came the same day an Associated Press investigation was published in newspapers nationwide saying that a vast array of pharmaceuticals have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans.

The AP report said the concentrations of these drugs are tiny, far below the levels of medical doses. Even so, the report says the presence of these drugs in drinking water is heightening concerns among scientists about the long-term impacts on human health and the environment.

LAKE LANIER STUDIED

Gwinnett County, meanwhile, is paying $300,000 for a study of Lake Lanier, the region's main source of drinking water. Preliminary findings from the University of North Carolina study show some pharmaceuticals and "personal care products" were in the lake in January but not in the county's treated drinking water, said Neal Spivey, the county's director of water production.

Spivey said he did not know which types of chemicals were found in the lake. The study, he said, is continuing and the county is not expected to get a preliminary report until May.

"I would not be alarmed based on what I know right now," Spivey said. "It is hard to base anything on results of one sample. But this is pretty much what I expected to find — very low concentrations — because Lanier doesn't get a whole lot of treated wastewater in there, which is where most of these things are coming from."

The county's investigation was prompted, Spivey said, by other studies across the country. He also mentioned the American Water Works Association was aware the AP was working on an article about the presence of drugs in the nation's drinking water supply.

AP reporters, according to the article, reviewed hundreds of scientific reports, analyzed federal drinking-water databases and visited environmental study sites and treatment plants. Among the AP's findings were:

• Testing in Philadelphia discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems;

• Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California;

• U.S. Geological Survey researchers analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water;

"This is obviously a national problem," said Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, a Georgia water protection organization. "The EPA needs to show leadership and require local governments to do some testing for pharmaceuticals and personal care products."

Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was not available for comment Monday, said an EPA spokeswoman. But Grumbles told the AP the presence of drugs in drinking water "is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously."

The simple act of swallowing a pill could put drugs in the drinking water system. Bodies don't absorb all medication, so the rest can go down the toilet and into the sewage system. That wastewater is treated and released into rivers, lakes and reservoirs and then it is cleaned before it ends up in drinking water.

ATLANTA WATER TAINTED

The conditions exist in the Atlanta area for drugs to get into the drinking water supply. Some communities discharge treated wastewater upstream from drinking water intakes on the Chattahoochee River for the Cobb County-Marietta and Atlanta utilities. But local utility managers say they use water-cleaning methods that can zap these contaminants.

"Gwinnett uses ozone as its disinfectant to kill the bugs and critters and things in the water," Spivey said. "Ozone happens to be very effective at removing pharmaceuticals and most of the personal care products."

A DeKalb County water department spokeswoman said she could not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Some chemicals have managed to make it into the drinking water supply despite treatment processes. For example, a 1999 study by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found traces of caffeine, cotinine and acetaminophen, such as Tylenol, in treated drinking water in metro Atlanta. The study also found 16 pharmaceuticals in the region's treated wastewater and 10 in raw-water samples.

"The detection of antibiotics in raw drinking water," the report said, "is of particular concern because the presence of these chemicals in the environment may lead to the development of resistant bacterial strains, thus diminishing the therapeutic effectiveness of antibiotics."

Still, local utility managers said people should be measured in their reaction to the AP report.

"We are looking at a situation in many areas where the presence [of pharmaceuticals] is likely but the concentration is very unlikely to create any type of health concerns," said Glenn Page, general manager of the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

 

 

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