Pharmaceutical drugs in our tap water are a real and growing concern. According to Associate Press, at least 41 million Americans are exposed to these drugs daily! These pharmaceutical drugs include antibiotics, anticonvulsants, mood stabilizers, and sex hormones. To be fair, the concentrations of these drugs are small. They’re measured in parts per billion or trillion which is far below a medical dose. But the long-term effects of being exposed to pharmaceutical drugs in our tap water are not fully understood and should be a concern to everyone reading this.
Pharmaceutical drugs have been found in tap water in 24 major metropolitan areas ranging from California all the way to New Jersey. They’ve been found in Detroit, Lewisville, Kentucky and most major cities. So you might be asking yourself, how do these drugs get into my water? The answer is they get there from the toilet. People flush their leftover drugs down the toilet. It also goes down the toilet when they urinate. This wastewater is treated before it’s discharged into our reservoirs, rivers, and lakes. However, these treatments do not remove all of the drugs.
Here are some of the areas of biggest concern:
* In Philadelphia, they found 56 different pharmaceutical drugs or their by-products in people’s drinking water. These drugs included medicines for pain, infections, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness, and heart problems. In the cities surrounding watersheds, they found 63 drugs.
* Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications are also detected in the drinking water in Southern California. This affects 18.5 million people
* In Northern New Jersey, they found metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing drug carbamazepine in the water.
* In San Francisco, they found an unusually high level of sex hormones.
* In Washington, DC, they found six different pharmaceutical drugs.
* In Tucson, Arizona, they found antibiotics and two other drugs.
Of the 28 major metropolitan areas the AP tested, only Albuquerque, Austin, Texas, and Virginia Beach were negative!
If you think that this is only a city problem, you’re wrong. The Stroud Research Center in Avondale, Pennsylvania, measured water samples from New York City’s upstate watershed and found that more drugs were found in suburban sites than even in the city. One theory is that these drugs are escaping from failed septic tanks.
Even people who drink bottled water don’t always avoid exposure. Water bottling companies, most of which bottle tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals in that water. So it ends up in the bottle.
The AP and the Stroud Institute aren’t the only major organizations to study drugs in our drinking water. For example, the United States Geological Survey found low levels of hormones, including estrogen and testosterone, in over 80% of the water samples collected from 139 streams across 30 states in the US!
They also collected water samples from 25 rivers across the US and found detectable levels of opioids.
Finally, they tested water samples from 48 sites across the US and found detectable levels of antibiotics and over half of the samples tested.
The bottom line is most of the water in the US has detectable levels of pharmaceutical drugs. Those levels are low and don’t pose an immediate health risk. However long-term exposure to these drugs could be a serious risk to your health.
