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Drugs In Our Drinking Water
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."
I'd like to see the levels present in the average American's blood-stream.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
And what will they worry about when we can measure parts per trillion?
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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. 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. Is the average American really on that many drugs? Or are these water companies just really bad at keeping sewage out of people's taps?
Hrm. I wonder how this compares to other developed nations...
would seem to be a much bigger problem for most of us.
And if you're vegetarian, the metal-laden mining tailings that are commonly used as fertilizer can't be a good thing.
TORCHWOOD 1X01: EVERYTHING CHANGES
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
What's the biodegradability of this stuff? All we need is some modern version of DDT, working its way up the food chain.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This is another perfect example about how new media can't understand technology.
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!
Oh the fun things that are in the water.
And to think, I never got the chance to be part of the A.R.G.
It turns out We are living it.
On a side note, this is old news. I've seen it several times. It is news to sell water filtration systems which block out heavy metals like mercury and lead, but have no effect whatsoever in filtering out all the lithium and all the other drugs which don't contain heavy metals. (What kind of idiot would make you want to swallow medicine with lead or mercury in it?)
Next we will here about how there are GERMS in the water.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Rejoice! just as it was in the Middle Ages, soon we all will drink nothing but beer.
Sure, this is concerning to me because of how long all these chemicals survive and re-enter the water supply. Perhaps, this isn't even new News (fish on birth control -see here), but what concerns me is what about the other stuff that we introduce into our food/water supplies that is at higher concentrations? e.g., bovine hormones.
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.
As was stated, it's not because the water companies are paid to drug us, just so many people are taking these drugs that when people defecate and urinate, guess what enters the main water supplies? Most current filtering systems weren't designed with drugs in such a concentration in mind. I remember reading an article a few months back about estrogen being so small a particle it is virtually impossible to trap, eventually to cause problems because not only do people take estrogen supplements (albeit to a lesser extent than testosterone), but women keep passing it through natural methods. Personally, I think 90% of these drugs people take are excessive. I'm perfectly healthy and don't take any drugs, except an occasional ibuprofen, whereas a friend of mine is perfectly healthy and is on constant drugs. People need to learn the concept of placebo again (counterintuitive, maybe), they need to change the way they think about medications and their lifestyles. All this medication is ridiculous and unnecessary in most cases. The same principal applies- put shit in, get shit out.
is to equip every home's septic system with an incinerator
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Don't worry about a few parts per quadrillion of who the heck knows what.
You should worry about the massive amounts of fluoride that is being placed deliberately in our drinking water despite many known dangers. This extremely toxic and dangerous substance is being put into our water in massive quantities, on purpose, allegedly to help our teeth.
DDT is still allowed as well as illegally used in many places in the world. Do you know where your food comes from? In the USA, after banning DDT it was still for a long time in all the food being imported central/south america into the USA (don't know how much there is today and if I'd trust the official information on it.)
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 almost had a serious problem with bananas years back because everybody was using the same plant and the others were in such low numbers... but thats another issue.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Vol = pi * r^2 *h
Vol = pi * (170/2)^2 * 6 = 43350 * pi m^3
mg/m^3 = 100mg/(43350 * pi m^3) = (2)/(867*pi) mg/m^3
MM = 180.160 g/mol
ppm = (mg/m^3)(24.45)/(MM) = ((2)/(pi *867)(24.45)/(180.160) = 0.000099651 ppm
ppt = 1000^2 * ppm = 1000^2 * 0.000099651 = 99.651 ppt
You appear to be mistaken. Of course it is unreasonable to assume you actually crunched the numbers... At the least, if I am wrong, somebody can point out where.
It is also unreasonable to assume you are aware the LD50 of tetanus is 1 ppt... or that the LD50 of botulinum toxin is 1 ppt... It isn't like these things can harm you before they kill you at lower concentrations... It isn't like other chemicals can affect you at lower concentrations than their respective lethal doses... How absurd to think they can affect you before their lethal doses! You're alive or dead, nothing like cancer exists!
And it isn't like fish or other animals aggregate small concentrations into their bodies... No, of course not... How unreasonable! How dare anybody provide information. The bastard ought to be put into a noose!
Great times, even if just to watch the first ever water sommelier in action.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
Ben Goldacre once gave a nice example of what such concentrations actually mean: in a sphere of water with the same radius as the distance from the Earth to the Sun, there's a molecule.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
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 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 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.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.