Some fear drugs that humans pass may pose danger as they move into water supply
Teri Sforza
The Orange County Register
Issue date: 9/17/01 Section: National News
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SANTA ANA, Calif. - A mysterious stew of drugs - which have passed, unmetabolized, through the human body - cascades into America’s waterways daily.
Antibiotics, hormones from birth-control pills, chemotherapy agents, blood thinners, anti-inflammatory drugs, beta blockers, antidepressants, caffeine, nicotine and thousands of other pharmaceuticals and “personal-care products” are not removed from sewage by traditional treatment processes. Scientists have found them in treated wastewater that pumps into rivers and oceans all over the world.
The chemicals! occur in tiny concentrations - so small that the technology to measure them has emerged only in recent years. But even these low doses may profoundly impact wildlife and lead to more resistant strains of bacteria. No one knows how it all affects humans, or what the dangers of so many drugs mixing together may be.
Every day, for example, Orange County’s sewage-treatment plants pump about 270 million gallons of wastewater into the ocean, none of which is screened for the presence of pharmaceuticals because no such requirements exist. Only 150 million gallons gets two levels of treatment, as required under the Clean Water Act; the remaining 120 million gallons gets just a primary level of treatment, removing mainly solids, because of a waiver of the law that is up for renewal in 2003. The waiver to allow continued dumping of minimally treated sewage is raising wrath.
And, a $600 million plan to pump highly treated waste water underground to replenish Orange County’s drinking-water supply is raising eyebrows. Officials approved the first stage of that plan in March. “The question is, what is the impact of injecting very minute concentrations of all sorts of different compounds into the ground water?” said Christian G. Daughton, chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Chemistry Branch in Las Vegas. “The normal degradation processes that happen above ground are very greatly attenuated below ground. There are many fewer bacteria, no sunlight, so things can last a long, long time.
Antibiotics, hormones from birth-control pills, chemotherapy agents, blood thinners, anti-inflammatory drugs, beta blockers, antidepressants, caffeine, nicotine and thousands of other pharmaceuticals and “personal-care products” are not removed from sewage by traditional treatment processes. Scientists have found them in treated wastewater that pumps into rivers and oceans all over the world.
The chemicals! occur in tiny concentrations - so small that the technology to measure them has emerged only in recent years. But even these low doses may profoundly impact wildlife and lead to more resistant strains of bacteria. No one knows how it all affects humans, or what the dangers of so many drugs mixing together may be.
Every day, for example, Orange County’s sewage-treatment plants pump about 270 million gallons of wastewater into the ocean, none of which is screened for the presence of pharmaceuticals because no such requirements exist. Only 150 million gallons gets two levels of treatment, as required under the Clean Water Act; the remaining 120 million gallons gets just a primary level of treatment, removing mainly solids, because of a waiver of the law that is up for renewal in 2003. The waiver to allow continued dumping of minimally treated sewage is raising wrath.
And, a $600 million plan to pump highly treated waste water underground to replenish Orange County’s drinking-water supply is raising eyebrows. Officials approved the first stage of that plan in March. “The question is, what is the impact of injecting very minute concentrations of all sorts of different compounds into the ground water?” said Christian G. Daughton, chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Chemistry Branch in Las Vegas. “The normal degradation processes that happen above ground are very greatly attenuated below ground. There are many fewer bacteria, no sunlight, so things can last a long, long time.