Essay 1 Cause/Effect – Pharmaceuticals in the Water: Just How Safe is Our Drink Water

When I give my family water to drink or I make their meals, the expectation is that I’m providing the best care for my family. By societies standards, my family is considered healthy because we drink water instead of soda and we eat our meals at home, but what if the water I’m giving them is harming them instead? The EPA mandates that bacteria, pathogens and minerals be within a certain range, but what about pharmaceuticals? Although our water is considered safe by government standards, our water sources are causing ill health effects in humans because of sex hormones, steroids and antibiotics that are not being filtered out.

One of the ways pharmaceuticals are getting into the water supply is by way of urine. When we take drugs, our bodies use what we need and excrete what we don’t need into our urine. This gets flushed, goes to a sewage treatment facility, is treated and is then pumped to lakes and reservoirs. At the sewage treatment facilities they start by aerating the water. This causes the heavy solids to sink and the light solids, like oils, to float. They pump out the sludge on the bottom and skim off the solids on top. This is sent to ‘digesters’ where they are held for 20-30 days and the bacteria works to break down the solids. What is left over can either be taken to a landfill or it can be used as fertilizer for crops. When the solids are pumped out, the remaining liquid is sent on to sand filtration. This filters out some of the bacteria and the remaining solids. After the sand filtration, the water is treated with chlorine and pumped into lakes, rivers, reservoirs or even the ocean. (Perlman, 2011)

The hormones get into our drinking water when the water treatment plants take water from the same lakes, river and reservoirs, treat it and pump it to our homes. The treatments that we use are not enough to remove all of the hormones from the water. Using carbon removes more of the pharmaceuticals than sand, but not all of them. Chlorine is mainly what is used to “kill” anything in water, but it has been shown to make some pharmaceuticals more toxic. This causes a problem, not only with drinking water, but also with wildlife that lives downstream from these facilities. It’s an improvement over pumping raw sewage into the lakes and rivers, but there is documentation for 3 rivers of male fish living downriver from sewage treatment facilities that are starting to produce eggs. (Kasey, 2012)

The other cause for pharmaceuticals in the water is feedlots. Cows are given trenbolone in a slow-releasing ear implant to help them bulk up. A German study showed that only 10% of this is metabolized and the remaining amount is excreted in urine. In a Nebraskan river, downstream from a feedlot, male fish have lower testosterone levels and small heads. This is due to the water containing four times the amount of steroids than upstream from the feedlot.(Donn, Mendoza, & Pritchard, 2008)

Fish are very sensitive to changes in the environment, but the effects on humans are very similar to fish, though not as obvious. Females are hitting puberty earlier and male’s sperm counts are down. We are also building up a tolerance to antibiotics. Being exposed to low doses of hormones and antibiotics is causing hormonal changes and allergies in humans. Hormones and antibiotics are not the only pharmaceuticals that have been found in drinking water, anti-inflammatory, epilepsy, high cholesterol and anti-depressant medication, as well as tranquilizers have also been found in water around the country.

What can be done to filter the water? There aren’t any good ways to remove pharmaceuticals on a large scale, as of yet, even on a small scale, there seems to be conflicting ideas. An RO, reverse osmosis, system is the most popular idea, but the drawbacks for a large scale are pretty serious. For every gallon of clean water you make, it discards 3 gallons of wastewater. RO systems do not filter out anything smaller than water, this means chlorine and, although debatable, some pharmaceuticals; carbon filters are used in conjunction with RO systems to filter out the chlorine. Another drawback is that it filters out all of the minerals that our bodies do need, like fluoride, sodium, calcium, magnesium, and iron. While we do not need these in high doses, they are essential to our diet. American’s eat a lot of fast food and McDonald’s does not have these good minerals in their food, for that reason, we need to have them in our water. Distilling is another good option to filter the water, but has similar problems. It filters out all of the good minerals, but if not cleaned properly and can deposit the bad chemicals right back into the water as a powder. Carbon filters can filter out some of the pharmaceuticals and chemicals, but if not maintained, they do not work either.

The first thing we need do to get back on track is to dispose of our drugs properly. Every year, the DEA has the National Take Back Day; this year it is April 28^th. This is a day where law enforcement collect unused or expired drugs, typically at a police station, and send them to a location to be incinerated. It is recommended that you remove labels from the bottles so your information is not left behind on the bottles, as the bottles will be recycled. Hopefully this will greatly reduce the amount of pharmaceuticals in the water and then we can come up with an eco-friendly way to filter the rest.

Works Cited

Donn, J., Mendoza, M., & Pritchard, J. (2008, 03 10). Sex Hormones, Mood Stabilizers Found In Drinking Water Of 41 M Americans. Retrieved 02 13, 2012, from Huffpost Healthy Living: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/10/sex-hormones-mood-stabili_n_90714.html

Kasey, P. (2012, 02 13). For male fish producing eggs, multiple causes are likely. Retrieved 02 14, 2012, from The State Journal: http://www.statejournal.com/story/16925141/for-male-fish-producing-eggs-multiple-causes-are-likely-potomac

Perlman, H. (2011, 12 22). A visit to a wastewater-treatment plant: Primary treatment of wastewater. Retrieved 02 13, 2012, from U.S. Department of the Interior: http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wwvisit.html