How Your Health is Threatened

Pharmaceutical Pollution: What it is, and How Pharmaceutical Pollution Threatens Your Health-
by web site Six Wise.com

Americans are prescribed millions of doses of prescription drugs every year. Livestock are given millions more. But after the pill has been swallowed or the injection taken, the active components of the drugs do not become inert or completely absorbed by the body.

Far from disappearing, the drugs are excreted and now, scientists are finding, prescription drugs are showing up in our ground water, soil, waterways and even our drinking water. That's because our conventional sewage treatments may not be looking for drugs, and certainly don't always remove them. Adding to the problem are prescription drugs that aren't used, then are flushed down the toilet or deposited in landfills -- ultimately ending up in the environment.
This so-called "pharmaceutical pollution" could have major implications on wildlife, agriculture and humans -- yet is only beginning to be studied.
"This is an important new research area," said A. Lynn Roberts, leader of a Johns Hopkins team that began a study to determine the scope of pharmaceutical pollution in the United States. Roberts continued:
"Over the past few years, scientists in Europe have found pharmaceuticals in natural waterways, sewage treatment effluents and even in drinking water. Yet until this year [2003] there have been virtually no scientific studies examining this issue in the United States. ."

How Widespread is the Problem?
Current estimates are still being gathered, but a study conducted in 1999-2000 by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found that most waterways contain at least some antibiotics, steroids, synthetic hormones or other common drugs.

Just how many drugs are we using currently? A lot. Here are some statistics just for antibiotics (not including any other types of drugs):

· Humans consume 235 million doses of antibiotics each year.
· Livestock and poultry producers administered more than 21 million pounds of antibiotics to animals in 2004 alone.
When a drug is taken, experts say up to 90 percent may be excreted back into the environment, unchanged.

There is good news, and that is that attention to this issue is growing, and so is the drive to find out just what types of problems may be occurring.
The USGS agrees, stating in their report that "protecting the integrity of our water resources is one of the most essential environmental issues of the 21st century."

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