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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.
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...
TORCHWOOD 1X01: EVERYTHING CHANGES
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
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!
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
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.