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Pharmaceuticals in the Water Supply

 

So you don’t do drugs. Well that may not be true. Did you know that it has been recently shown that the water supplies of at least 41 million people in the U.S. are contaminated with dozens of pharmaceuticals that have come from the pee-pee of people and animals that take drugs.

It is apparent that water treatment can not remove all traces of medications. Granted the levels of these drugs may be low, but certain drugs like hormones are meant to operate at parts per billion. There is evidence that drugs can react with chlorine and other chemicals in the water, rendering them more toxic.

Fish downstream from a Nebraska feedlot were found to have depressed levels of testosterone and smaller than normal heads (does that remind you of any tap water drinking men you know), and steroid levels in the water were 4 times those of the water upstream.

Investigation has found widespread contamination with both over-the-counter and prescription drugs, including painkillers, hormones, antibiotics, anti-convulsants, anti-depressants, and drugs for caner or heart disease. Of 28 major cities tested only 2 found no pharmaceutical contamination. In Philadelphia, 56 different drugs were found in treated drinking water, and 63 were found in the city’s watershed.

Even rural areas and deep aquifers were found to be contaminated, often coming from landfills, feedlots and septic systems.

Almost none of the water suppliers test for this kind of pollution, those that do screen for them conceal the results from the public. Water and soft drink bottlers don’t test for this either. Water pollution is bad enough already, but these drugs may be even worse, since they are purposely designed to have an effect on the human organism at very low levels.

I tell at least one or two people a day that they should stop drinking tap water or upgrade to an RO (reverse osmosis) water filter or drink distilled water. Most little filters that screw on the tap or Britta type filters are insufficient.

We are mostly made up of water and we should drink plenty of it, so let’s make sure it as pure as it can be and that we are not going to take anybody else’s used drugs.

 

 

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