Sunday, March 9, 2008

Drugs in Our Water

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, an Associated Press investigation shows.

This reminds me of the discovery of cocaine on 4 of 5 dollar bills in 1997 (can't find the article, sorry). I personally don't think this is any major breakthrough, I just realize that this means that if drugs can get through industrial water filters, so can anything... flushed drugs, poo, dead goldfish, dog slobber, and so on. I'd much rather find myself ingesting a mood stabilizer (that I may actually need) than human feces. Oh well, I'm not dead... yet.

Read it.

2 comments:

BoBo said...

Hi Will,

Great post! Shocking as this is, I am not surprised. Compared to all the other toxins in our drinking water, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I've posted a link here for you and the readers to USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Program. While informative, it is very scary!

http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/

Here's another one to look at regarding mercury in our surface water..pretty scary stuff as well..

This also comes from the USGS

http://water.usgs.gov/wid/FS_216-95/FS_216-95.html

Will Conway said...

Hey,

Didn't have to much time to go through that in detail, but wow, that's scary.