Drugs In Our Drinking Water 483
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."
Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:4, Funny)
You must be new here.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:4, Funny)
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:4, Informative)
1:1,000,000,000
Whereas Homeopathic dilutions are often 10-100 serial dilutions at 1:100,
or
1:100,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1:(googol)^2
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
However, the concentrations that we are speaking about here are still detectable, thus higher.
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mood stabilizers? (Score:5, Funny)
Perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
Furthermore, constant, low grade exposure of bacteria to antibiotics places selection pressure on those that are resistant. I have a problem with the creation of an environment where antibiotic resistant bacteria are encouraged.
I'd also want to know the rationale behind sex hormones in the water. I've also been interested in the nature of the so-called sexual liberation of the 90s, and how that influences the political power balance between government and the governed. Sex has been, in my view, an integral part of the circuses half of the bread and circuses act for quite some time. Encouraging a mindless consumerist culture is easier when you bind it with sex, as you add a natural urge to the equation making the lifestyle of flagrant instant gratification and blissful ignorance even more seductive to the masses. Anyone from 100 years ago would consider our society unbearably sexually depraved, and it's only going further down that road. Mothers now dress pre-pubescent daughters in designer clothes that are designed to be sexually provocative. I find nothing more disgusting than an 8 year old in hotpants and a boob tube. Mothers: Women's liberation != Looking like the village slut.
Wait, I'm giving advice to mothers on the women's movement? Clearly I've totally lost track of what site I'm on.
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Informative)
Have you heard how girls are reaching menarche at a younger age than a few decades ago and male sperm counts are dropping? "Better" growing up through chemistry.
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
They would probably also be outraged that a black man and white woman were leading presidential candidates. Why the fuck would we judge our society today on what someone from 100 years ago *might* have thought?
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone from 100 years ago would consider our society unbearably sexually depraved,
No, that's just factually wrong. It depends very much on *who* from 100 years ago. From which culture, and which aspects of "our" culture. (I suppose you're talking American culture, it's not the same even across first-world countries, not even close)
For example, you people manage to debate for WEEKS and write THOUSANDS of webpages, newspaper-articles, BLOG-entries and whatnot on the topic of showing a single naked female breast on TV for perhaps 5 seconds. Which is just ridicolously prude.
You also have, if I got it correctly, 18 as age of consent in many jurisdictions, an age where many people a hundred years ago would expect to be married already and certainly sexually active.
In general there's a large moral panic in the USA about children and sexuality. Elder Scrolls was rated 13+, a game where you run around and kill beasts and humans, blood squirting. Then it gor re-rated "mature" 17+ because someone made a mod that made female characters run around topless.
I could give more examples like these, but there's no point, I'm sure you can think of them yourself.
How 'bout a little fire, straw man? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even assuming you're telling the truth, "Correlation is not Causation".
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!
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
IIRC, you'd still need something like charcoal to take care of molecular/atomic contiminants like lead, chlorine, heavy metals, etc. That's why they're so popular here in the states since microbes are already purged thanks to chlorination of the water, so that's pretty much all that's left.
I'd be willing to bet that charcoal filters do a good job with all the stuff mentioned in TFA, but I'm not a scientist.
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference, if you're interested, (though your factious tone suggests that you are not) is that atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures have a known causal relationship via the undisputed greenhouse effect [wikipedia.org]. This relationship must exist in some form or another, because if it didn't, life as we know it would not be possible as the earth's average surface temperature would be well below freezing.
The OP's example of milk and being sick is only a correlative relationship because he lacks any true mechanistic explanation for his observation and furthermore fails to demonstrate that the two things are not merely coincidental in nature.
Science [xkcd.com]. It works, bitches.
-Grym
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's interesting that I was modded "flamebait." I can't see where I was insulting anyone or attempting to draw anyone's ire.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I t
Re:But then.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But then.... (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Re:But then.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But then.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How much time does your drinking water spend "topically applying" its contents on your teeth? Really fluoride in the water is asinine.
Uh...no.
This has been heavily and thoroughly studied since the 50's. Fluoride in drinking water helps strengthen teeth. Period.
My dental hygienist formerly worked in a town where no fluoride was added to the water and she said the teeth there were awful. Anecdotes aside:
In 1978 Consumer Reports magazine summed up the situation well: "The simple truth is that there's no 'scientific controversy' over the safety of fluoridation. The practice is safe, economical, and beneficial. The survival of this fake controversy represents, in our opinion, one of the major triumphs of quackery over science in our generation."
From: fluorideinfo.org [fluorideinfo.org]
Re:But then.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:But then.... (Score:4, Interesting)
The reality is that anybody making any confident statement about fluoride - positive or negative - is speaking way beyond the evidence. Fluridisation is a very contentious issue, and tends to be debated in a highly polarised, politicised manner, with possibilities stated as certainties and much wailing and gnashing of mottled, slightly less caried teeth. In 1999 the UK Department of Health had the York University Centre for Reviews and Dissemination do a systematic review of the evidence [york.ac.uk] on the benefits and/or harm of fluridisation. There's not much of significance since.
Their most important result wasn't about fluride, it was about the studies - almost to the last one, they were methodologically flawed. The ones which met the minimum quality threshold suggested that there was maybe, possibly, something like a 14% increase in the number of children without dental caries in areas with fluoridated water, but the variance was enormous (some studies even had negative results). So if someone says there's overwhelming evidence that fluridation works, they're talking out of their ass. There may be a small gain to be had, but this isn't established scientifically.
Then there's the potential negatives. Fluoridation gives about one eigth of people fluorosis (discoloured teeth). There are other factors too, though these are less well established, such as a Taiwanese study [sciencedirect.com] which found a high incidence of bladder cancer in women from areas where the natural fluoride content in water was high. It's an early result, and the authors of the study even note that there's potentially a statisitcal problem with the study, but the possibility remains. I've heard this result stated as fact.
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:LSD (Score:4, Funny)
This is a community service message brought to you by The-People-Who-Were-Fired-Out-Of-A-Gun-Lined With-Baroque-Paintings-Into-A-Sea-Of-Electricity[Wade Davis reference].
RE: Drugs in Our Drinking Water (Score:5, Funny)
It's the commies (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's the commies (Score:4, Informative)
From Dr. Strangelove. Whoever modded down parent wants slapping.
Re: (Score:3, 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.
My homeopathic message (+5 insightful) (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, what they probably should do is have no less than three, separate water mains. One really small one (gotta keep the flow velocity up or yo
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
Re:Tap Water vs Bottled Water (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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).
Hooray! (Score:5, Funny)
FFS... PPB? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
False positives? (Score:3, Insightful)
With amphetamines etc. in the drinking water, what will that do for drug tests on otherwise clean people?
Re:False positives? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just waiting for the study on air to come out.
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.
Re:A non-issue! (Score:4, Interesting)
And all of this is muddying the water (har har) and distracting us from other, possibly more pressing concerns like hormones and antibiotic content of industrially produced food. You make a bloody good point, and its something I've worried about for a good while, worried about it because there are peer reviewed studies indicating that it is real, and the effects it has are definitely detectable. Even anecdotally, its starting to concern many (very poorly educated) people in my community when they observe that their 10 and 12 year old daughters are in the advanced stages of puberty. That's becoming the norm, when a century ago it would have been all but unheard of. Even as an anecdotal observation, its causing a significant number of concerned parents.
I wish we had a political candidate who was talking about these things. He or She would be buried by Corporate Agriculture for even mentioning it, but just the mention would bring it to the fore of the political consciousness. I think there are vast areas where such concerns and pledges would poll very well, and that gets politician's attention.
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.
Yes, BUT... (Score:4, Informative)
True enough. But that is part of the point. First off, I should point out that there is no absence of studies! Effective and toxic levels of most of these substances have been long-established. There are still some gaps in long-term-exposure data for some substances, but even those gaps have been closing because people started worrying about this stuff 30 and 40 years ago, and there have been LOTS of long-term studies.
Given that, we need to concentrate on the real, known problems (like hormones and antibiotics in meat) rather than things that make great emotional arguments, but that we know scientifically are not real problems, or at least have extremely small probabilities of being problems.
Further, excess human female hormones in the environment (which beef growth hormones closely mimic, for one example) are likely to hurt male children (and even male adults) as much as female children. Why are people not paying as much attention to that?
Many countries will not even allow the importation of U.S. beef because of the antibiotics and hormones. I do not know about exporting chicken, but they use similar practices in that industry.
The meat industry can get at least as much meat (perhaps even more) without hormones, by using high-yield breeds like the Belgian Blue. But since the industry has not seemed inclined to change their practices on their own, it looks like we might have to force them, via legislation or litigation, or even boycotting if necessary.
Contraceptives in the rain. (Score:4, Interesting)
TORCHWOOD 1X01: EVERYTHING CHANGES
POE (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the biodegradability of this stuff? All we need is some modern version of DDT, working its way up the food chain.
we have DDT (Score:3, Interesting)
There are other chemicals as well being used. Not to mention the over farming and genetic plants that may not be causing direct problems (yet) but may cause many indirect ones. We almo
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!
Re:More misleading 'news' about 'drugs' (Score:4, Funny)
Don't drink the water (Score:4, Funny)
What about other sources? (Score:3, Interesting)
Precious bodily fluids (Score:3, Funny)
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Lord, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. Nineteen forty-six, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen, tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?
General Jack D. Ripper: Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No.
General Jack D. Ripper: But I... I do deny them my essence.
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...
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Shit in, shit out (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Re:the only way to solve this problem (Score:4, Funny)
Birth Control Should be Banned? (Score:4, Informative)
While there were no effects of the synthetic estrogen on tadpole growth, development and sex ratios, we did see a low incidence of males with eggs in the treated lake. After estrogen additions, one of the more predominant species of zooplankton had lower proportions of males, and females from several species of zooplankton produced fewer eggs.
The entire study is here: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/sr-sr/finance/tsri-irst/proj/endocrin/tsri-94_e.html [hc-sc.gc.ca]
Really that desperate for something to fear? (Score:4, Insightful)
You really have to be desperate for something to worry about to get concerned about compounds that have already been extensively tested in human populations at astronomically higher doses and shown to be at least reasonably safe. Waving your hands about and talking about "long term" exposure does not make them any more scary. Almost all drug effects have thresholds--which is to say a concentration below which they do nothing
It is hard to get effects at very low concentrations. Basically, to do anything to the body, a drug has to stick to something in the body for long enough to somehow damage it. To do so at low concentrations requires a lot of binding energy. Compounds with enough binding energy to produce effects at such low doses are very, very rare. The only real exception is mutagens--drugs that bind to DNA and damage it. In this case, there is at least a real, if tiny, chance that one molecule of the drug could hurt something in your body. But drugs that are able to do this at very low levels do it even more at high doses, producing damaging effects that lead to them being weeded out early in drug development.
So if you insist on worrying about something, worry about all of those industrial chemicals in the water, because you can be sure that any molecule that is made or used for any purpose is in your water at some level. Most of those haven't been tested in big clinical trials at much higher doses in human populations. The chance that those molecules will hurt you is probably pretty small, also, but it's not quite as ridiculous as worrying about traces of pharmaceuticals.
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.
Bullshit! (Score:3, Interesting)
Great times, even if just to watch the first ever water sommelier in action.
Re:Strange... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hints:
1- It not put directly into the drinking water
2- It involves toilets
Re:Strange... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They're not. The drugs end up in the reprocessing loop because people throw them down the drain or flush them down the toilet, and the filtration systems currently in place don't get rid of all of them. Makes you wonder if bottled water is any better, or if there's any way to filter the water more thoroughly yourself. Would distillation and activated-charcoal filtering do the trick?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And that's not all (Score:3, Funny)
You should worry about the massive amounts of fluoride that is being placed deliberately in our drinking water despite many known dangers.
Yes, indeed, although it's not nearly as dangerous as dihydrogen monoxide [dhmo.org], which is present in much, much higher levels in tap water as well as bottled water. Even the most advanced water filtering systems let 99% or more of the DHMO pass right through, but thanks to loopholes in the FDA regulations, you won't see that unpleasant fact listed on the safety sheets.
I mean, you're right to be worried about the Commie plot to impurify our precious bodily fluids, but fluoride is just the tip of the iceberg. (By