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AP finds drugs in the water; MWRA doesn't test for them
By Brett on Sun, 03/09/2008 - 6:47pm
The AP has been busy, finding lots of drugs in people's water. Sadly, Boston is on the list of cities that don't test for this stuff. Look on the bright side; you could live in a city run these morons:
Arlington, Texas, acknowledged that traces of a pharmaceutical were detected in its drinking water but cited post-9/11 security concerns in refusing to identify the drug.
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Comments
post-9/11 security concerns
Golly, but those "post-9/11 security concerns" sure do come in handy in so many ways, don't they?
A real godsend for adminstrators all across the country!
Tylenol vs Hormones
Naproxen? Diazepam? Caffeine? At a level of parts-per-billion or parts-per-trillion, who cares that these types of drugs are in our water supplies. That small a concentration is miniscule. To compare: imagine dumping a few bottles of Tylenol into the Quabbin Reservoir (39 square miles; 180 miles of shoreline). That's a trillionth.
If I am going to worry about the environmental effects of a pharmaceutical, I will choose to worry about hormones. For example, bovine growth hormone. There are risks to the cows; potential risks to the humans that eat them; and potential risks to the aquatic wildlife affected by rBGH-tainted runoff (which the article mentions). Research has suggested that minute quantities of hormones may affect fish. Some researchers theorize that it is affecting humans as well.
On another note: a couple of years ago there was an interesting study done in Italy, in which researchers were able to estimate the degree of cocaine consumption in a given region by looking for the presence of its metabolized byproducts in rivers:
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=1937
Part per trillion... anyone
Part per trillion... anyone who wants to worry about this one should be made to count to one trillion out loud.
Dangerous Dosage Depends on the Toxicity
One part per trillion of radiolabled components of DNA is bad news.
One part per trillion of tylenol? Not so much.
The MWRA doesn't screen for this because the levels are below detection for most samples and the number of compounds to screen for is huge. That doesn't mean that it isn't on the radar, just that they cannot afford to chase it when it isn't clearly an immediate threat.
Anybody ever read the research on caffeine pollution in Puget Sound? It may not be in the drinking water, but it certainly shows up in the seawater around Seattle.
exactly.
It's nice that the previous commentors are so quick to reject this as a problem, but SwirlyGrrl is right. For some chemicals it could be a source of concern. After all, some *pharmaceutical* agents have a target dose in the body in the ppb range. And with such a wide range of agents in the water, it's entirely possible that some of them combine in surprising ways to produce larger effects.
I'm not saying it's necessarily a problem, but to dismiss it out of hand is probably not a good idea.
Or...
... it could be a good thing. We might all be getting doses of stuff we could use. God knows the world in general could stand to be a bit more tranquil.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Uh Oh
Reminds me of that Stephen King story...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_Whole_...
Unless it is Caffeine
Seattle tracks human waste inputs into their surface water using caffeine, but they had to modify the protocol for the high levels found there.
MWRA also has the advantage
MWRA also has the advantage of controlling a large buffer area around their water source. Unless the wildlife around the Quabbin Reservoir is taking Tylenol, there's likely very little in MWRA-supplied water. Other cities & towns (or people with private wells) probably aren't as well off.
I think it's only a matter of time before some smart company starts marketing water with ppb levels of ibuprofen, estrogen, codeine, etc as "Enhanced H2O" and selling it for $2.79 per bottle.
Hmmmmmm.
I guess that would explain why I had an intense two hour conversation with my grandmother last night. I should mention my grandmother's been dead for 12 years now...
The headline's wrong
Universal Hub really shouldn't be the only source of news.
WBZ had an interview with the MWRA, which is enlightening:
http://wbz.com/Firefighters-fight-blaze-at-Boston-...
sorry
once you click the url, scroll down to hear the audio interview.
Or get it straight from the (water) source
Pharmaceuticals Unlikely in MWRA Water.
The headline is just fine
If you read through the press release Adam found: a)they just started testing and b)they haven't yet released the results.
Furthermore, the whole press release can be summed up as: "Even though we haven't done any testing, we're convinced there's no problem." That's not an objective way to look at a problem, especially when the AP story states that a lot of these drugs survive everything but reverse-osmosis filtration. They don't specifically mention ozone treatment, however.
Also, what's this about "UH being the only source of news?"