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Drugs In Our Drinking Water
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Mar 09, 2008 05:24 PM
from the you-want-water-with-that dept.
from the you-want-water-with-that dept.
MikeURL alerts to a AP story just published after a months-long investigation on the vast array of pharmaceuticals present in US drinking water. These include antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers, and sex hormones, as well as over-the-counter drugs. Quoting: "To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe. But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health."
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Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
I heard the distinctive "whoosh" of a joke sailing far above someone's head and came as fast as I could.
That's gotta be the weirdest fetish I've ever heard of.
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Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
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Perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Perspective (Score:5, Informative)
You do not develop an immunity to antibiotics. Bacteria do. Whether or not you personally get a mini-dose of antibiotics has not bearing on that.
On the other hand, if we are all getting a mini-dose, then those bacteria that are antibiotic resistant will proser all the more. Also consider that it isn't only humans that would be getting these mini-doses.
Yet another example of the "no man is an island" truism.
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Re:Perspective (Score:5, Informative)
Try again. Avogadro's number [wikipedia.org] is 6.022 E 23. A drug like penicillin has a molecular weight of 334. Other drugs will be heavier or lighter, but generally within a factor of 10. 8oz of water is 236g. That combines to give about 400 billion (4 E 11) molecules of penicillin at 1 part per trillion (1 E -12).
Molecules are small. Even mildly complex organic ones like drugs. Check your intro chem text before spouting off about such things.
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Well, I wouldn't worry yet (Score:5, Informative)
1. Let's start with the easy stuff first, with the ibuprofen and opiates and whatnot.
For a starter, your organism is already good at dealing with stuff that doesn't belong there. The liver alone gets rid of maybe three quarters of the medicines ever invented. Infinitesimal doses of even some pretty toxic stuff don't really get to do much damage or addiction or whatever, before they're neutralized or filtered out.
But for what you ask, pretty much you just have to make the following distinction:
A) Those who don't cause addiction, i.e., the over-the-counter stuff, well, those don't matter. The organism doesn't compensate in the other direction for those, or not for long. But if you're worried anyway, read on, the reason to not worry is:
B) Those which do cause addiction... well, those don't matter either when measured in parts per trillion.
Physiological addiction is when the body adjusts in the other direction. E.g., a cigarette makes you feel good, among other things, because it inhibits MAO-B, which is to say: works much the same as antidepressant medication. But your body gradually adjusts by producing _more_ MAO-B to get back to the normal baseline. Due to this adjustment, now you feel shitty without them, and eventually you need your smoke even just to get where a non-smoker is without them. That's addiction.
Well, the reason you don't need to worry about those is that your body adjust gradually towards a point that's proportional to the perturbation. If you perturb the system by 0.00000001% in one direction, the "correction" will be at most 0.00000001% in the other direction. If at all.
2. Antibiotics have been around long before humans knew about them. In fact, long before humans even existed. Penicillin, the first discovered antibiotic, is produced naturally by a fungus. (And conversely a bunch of bacteria kill fungi.)
Traces of penicillin were present almost everywhere, if nothing else, because rain got it everywhere. And yet superbugs didn't happen before humans got into antibiotics. Probably evolving the relevant mutations was more of a disadvantage when you _weren't_ on top of a penicillinum patch.
At any rate, to get back to something a bit more certain, infinitesimal traces of antibiotics in the water or in your body, don't create much of an evolutionary pressure. Bacteria _can_ survive one or two broken penicillin-binding proteins, for example because a freak accident made them meet a penicillin-type mollecule in the water. Heck, they lose some now and then even just to C14 decay, plus other natural causes. They'll just produce more of those proteins. That's what they have ribosomes for.
The moment when evolution happens is when there's a clear advantage in having a particular mutation. This typically means having a high chance of ending up dead without it. E.g., when you take antibiotics for a pneumonia, the concentrations there are high enough that a heck of a lot of "unprotected" bacteria just die. That's one heck of a natural selection of those who do have defenses. By contrast, being slightly inconvenienced, and only rarely, by traces of antibiotics in water, doesn't quite count as an evolutionary pressure.
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Re:Well, I wouldn't worry yet (Score:5, Insightful)
But that logic doesn't hold for the hormones or hormone-mimicking properties of substances found in the water. Some hormones routinely affect biological processes at concentrations measured in parts per billion. This is especially true in developing organisms, where, e.g., gradients of such miniscule concentrations can determine which end of an embryo is the head and which is the tail.
The truth is we don't know the effect that these artificial chemicals will have on us or on the environment.
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Re:Perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
It was a little slimy and probably ready for its cleaning, which I performed. But it still amazes me that they can have this in place, where those of us in the US have to use these disposable filters that are expensive.
Now I really don't know how effective those rock filters are, but one thing is for sure: people don't get sick when they drink water that's been through that filter.
I have yet to see a filter like that here in Los Angeles and will gladly buy several when I do. I haven't been back to Mexico for a while but when I go back to visit, if I haven't gotten a filter here i'll definitely buy on there. The only draw back is that water comes out a little too slow for me. But that's why you let it go for a while and fill up extra water jugs and what not.
One last thing probably worth mentioning is that there was always this "crazy talk" about amoebas in the water," and that is why you couldn't drink water straight from a tap without a filter. For the entire time in Mexico and all the places I visited, I never got sick from drinking the tap water. I even got to see the source of the water from the river that flowed from mountains!
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Re:Perspective (Score:5, Informative)
That's why so many are allergic to milk products. They cannot digest them without the normally included enzymes.
Cats fed only store bought, processed milk do not thrive and have reproductive difficulties within two or fewer generations. You can read about a summary of this here.
These two items are related, but not in the way you're implying; humans that have lactose intolerance, along with all cats, simply lack the mutation that allows them to produce lactase beyond the period of normal weaning. That is to say, milk-drinking humans are mutants who have managed to adapt to nursing from some other animal's teat for their entire lives. The presence or absence of milk enzymes is not going to be enough to compensate for a complete lack of an enzyme in a person's gut. It might make a small difference in marginal cases, such as biracial black/white children.
Your link to the cat study is also useless in supporting your point, because the doctor was already feeding the cats raw milk. The difference was between the cooked and uncooked meat scraps, as far as I can tell. Possibly a taurine deficiency. It also fails to mention whether the cats in the experimental groups were fed raw or cooked meat scraps, which would be important in determining the root cause.
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Re:But then.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:But then.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:But then.... (Score:5, Funny)
Mandrake: Yes, Jack?
Ripper: Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?
Mandrake: Well, I can't say I have.
Ripper: Vodka, that's what they drink, isn't it? Never water?
Mandrake: Well, I-I believe that's what they drink, Jack, yes.
Ripper: On no account will a Commie ever drink water, and not without good reason.
Mandrake: Oh, eh, yes. I, uhm, can't quite see what you're getting at, Jack.
Ripper: Water, that's what I'm getting at, water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven-tenths of this earth's surface is water. Why, do you realize that seventy percent of you is water?
Mandrake: Uh, uh, Good Lord!
Ripper: And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids.
Mandrake: Yes. (he begins to chuckle nervously)
Ripper: Are you beginning to understand?
Mandrake: Yes. (more laughter)
Ripper: Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure-grain alcohol?
Mandrake: Well, it did occur to me, Jack, yes.
Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation. Fluoridation of water?
Mandrake: Uh? Yes, I-I have heard of that, Jack, yes. Yes.
Ripper: Well, do you know what it is?
Mandrake: No, no I don't know what it is, no.
Ripper: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?
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Re:But then.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:But then.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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LSD (Score:5, Funny)
Re:LSD (Score:5, Informative)
The mildly amusing flaw in that old tale is that LSD is actually quite unstable, and if you put it in the drinking water it would break down long before it got anywhere near anybody's houses. It has to be carefully stored if you want to keep it for more than an hour or so.
Also, the dose required for LSD to function is so minute compared to most drugs that it would be quite obvious if it was there. Even in small numbers of parts per million, you'd likely be tripping.
It's really quite a strange chemical.
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RE: Drugs in Our Drinking Water (Score:5, Funny)
It's the commies (Score:4, Funny)
Apply directly to the drinking water (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apply directly to the drinking water (Score:5, Insightful)
Just think of the consequences if homeopathy actually worked.
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My homeopathic message (+5 insightful) (Score:5, Funny)
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Tap Water vs Bottled Water (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Because tap water has teams of people objectively surveying its quality, unmotivated by profit. And bottled water has very little regulation, at least when measured against the regulation required around tap water.
I, for one, drink either tap water or filtered tap water. These bottled water companies can take a hike, as far as I'm concerned.
Re:Tap Water vs Bottled Water (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure it doesn't supply all of the water Coca-Cola uses for Dasani, but it goes to show what a ripoff bottled water can be, and usually is.
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Re:Tap Water vs Bottled Water (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as Dasani goes they actually add sodium to the water, I'm guessing for taste.
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Re:Tap Water vs Bottled Water (Score:5, Informative)
Needless to say it's not available here any more.
If you can't be arsed to read the article it's basically:
1. buy clean, uncontaminated tap water @0.06p litre
2. add carcinogen
3. sell for £1.80 litre
4. profit!!!!
5. get found out, "voluntarily" withdraw product
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Re:Tap Water vs Bottled Water (Score:5, Funny)
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It's all local (Score:5, Informative)
It is, after all, much easier to ship syrup than finished soda.
All Coca-cola and Dasani is just local water, filtered and with additives (there's a mineral packet for making Dasani). The other major soft drink brands work the same way.
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Re:Tap Water vs Bottled Water (Score:5, Insightful)
People get very suspicious when something is free. And often for good reason. The problem is that when something isn't free, they suddenly lose all that cynicism and become trusting little lambs.
As tap water is very cheap, there is very little unrational trust involved and therefore people check it out. However, when it comes to bottled water that people pay a lot of money for, they trust that it better (without any reason what so ever).
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Hooray! (Score:5, Funny)
Answer (Score:5, Informative)
Also informing people that what goes down the toilet goes in your drinking water.
Are you fucking kidding me?! (Score:4, Interesting)
People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.
Hrm. I wonder how this compares to other developed nations...
Please read Silent Spring. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just ridiculous, when you think about the number of "X milligram of ingredient Y" pills people must be taking for detectable amounts to be showing up in drinking water after being diluted and filtered that many times.
Women on birth control. Men on aspirin regimens. Antidepressants. Allergy medications. Over the counter painkillers like tylenol and ibuprofin.
A huge amount of this stuff passes right through our bodies and into the septic system. What about all those bottles of medication that don't get used fully, or sit in your cabinet for those just-in-cases, and then expire? Most people flush the stuff or chuck it in the wastebasket.
If you don't see the problem there, please go read Silent Spring, right now. Or go read about how PCBs made their way from Springfield, MA to the other side of the planet. Now think about how we tell pregnant women not to eat too much tuna, lest they get a dangerous dosage of mercury that could harm their child. Wake up, man.
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three questions (Score:5, Funny)
What water supplies?
And how can I buy some of the water?
A non-issue! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want something to worry about, then start worrying about the antibiotics and growth hormones used in cattle and chickens. That is something real, with documented effects.
Truth (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) Now that we are reliably detecting much lower amounts of contaminants, people are demanding that we get rid of them even though they are insignificant. It's an emotional rather than a rational thing.
Institutions that make their livelihood in this area -- particularly government bureaucracies like the EPA -- are very, very highly motivated to make these small things seem like real problems, because that is how they increase their power and budget.
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Contraceptives in the rain. (Score:4, Interesting)
TORCHWOOD 1X01: EVERYTHING CHANGES
More misleading 'news' about 'drugs' (Score:5, Interesting)
In this case, the technology is advanced chemical analysis machines that can detect trace amounts of drugs.
In fact, it can detect trace amounts of whatever chemical it happens to be programmed to find if the trace amounts are present.
The key word here is trace, as in a few hundred thousand or less Molecules.
But give these jokers the opportunity to combine the words 'detect' and 'drugs', and they turn into self-righteous raving lunatics predicting the end of civilization and, by implication of the word 'drugs', millions of crazed niggers and hippies running amok, which is what the word 'drugs' means to the media fear mongers.
Since the level of the trace amounts detected is so far below the effective medical dose to have any effect on human behavior or physiology, then why are they reporting it as if it were some kind of imminent problem?
And, what, pray tell, is exactly so new about this situation? These trace amounts of (oh, horrors!) 'drugs' seem to have always been in the environment. What's new is not their presence, it's the ability to detect molecular levels of them.
But the news media is presenting this as a warning that some terrible thing is about to happen. But it's not. This is a non-story being 'fear amplified' by the news media who are extremely limited in the real stories that they are allowed to cover by their corporate owners. So they just pander to vague fears.
To hell with them. They are not professionals anymore, nor do they have anything resembling credibility left.
And I am all so sick and tired of normal healthy productive people being fired from their jobs just because molecular trace amounts of 'drugs' turn up in the body fluids that they have been forced to surrender against the 4th and 5th ammendment of the US constitution that we are suspossed to live under in the USA.
So you invented a machine that can 'prove' that someone smoked weed a month ago and therefore you can legally use this 'evidence' as an excuse to destroy their life? Well, fuck you and your machine. You are an asshole and a fascist and you are not doing your company, your people, or your country any favors by pretending otherwise.
Have a nice day!
Fear mongering at its finest.... (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine hiking up into the woods, and coming across a pristine lake. The lake is 6 meters deep, and 170 meters in diameter. Into this lake you toss a single, 100 milligram aspirin tablet.
You have now polluted the lake with aspirin at 1 part per trillion.
This is fear-mongering at its finest. Why, we have DRUGS and COMPOUNDS and CHEMICALS in our water! We simply MUST pass MORE LAWS and INCREASE TAXES to purify your drinking water! You could be getting LETHAL DOSES of DRUGS if we don't do SOMETHING! And for those of you living on private property, well we HAVE TO CONTROL what you can do on your property EVEN BEYOND what's done now, because you could be polluting the aquifer by simply dropping a single aspirin tablet on to your lawn!
Never mind you'd have to drink a few million liters of water to even get 1 milligram of the drug...
the only way to solve this problem (Score:5, Interesting)
that's not happening
luckily, this whole issue isn't really a problem. we all have radon in our homes too. that competes with any of these substances on a scale of worry. however, if the concentrations are low enough, the concentrations shouldn't worry you. this whole issue is nothing but sensationalism
FUD - all tech is about tradeoffs, this is another (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's remember that our ancestors for millions of years have been drinking water with all sorts of NATURAL pollutants, of varying lethality: mud, feces, ungodly numbers of organisms, any soluble mineral that stream or pond happened to contact, etc, etc, etc.
Umpteen thousands of generations later, while not perfect, I daresay that the resulting human (or any animal in 2008) digestive tract and immune system is pretty freaking robust and capable of isolating/filtering/rejecting pollutants and contaminants. Despite these pollutants being in our water systems for probably the last 50 years, people are living longer than ever. QED?
Evolution for the win.
Granted, of COURSE there are pollutants now (such as microtraces of drugs, etc) that we've never encountered before. But I'm pretty confident that my system will handle it.
Either that, or kill me. If I handle it and pass those genes onto offspring, it's a win for the species.
From the moment we stumbled upon the idea of fire, humans have accepted the tradeoffs of technology. We began to cook our food - with a resulting increase of some sort of carcinogen, if my weird vegan hippie friends are right - but what we got was a massive reduction in food poisoning, bacteriological issues, and parasites with eating uncooked meat. The tradeoff was worth it, IMO. We now have electricity, but there are countless effects on the environment and us due to the generation of same....aside from my hippie friends, nobody's advocating banning electricity.
Considering the general life-improvements most of those drugs have given the human species overall, I think the tradeoff has been worth it.
Re:Strange... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hints:
1- It not put directly into the drinking water
2- It involves toilets
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Re:False positives? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just waiting for the study on air to come out.
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