Also worth considering is that the compounds found at the highest levels are likely to be the least well-absorbed, and therefore the least likely to pose a danger via ingestion of homeopathic quantities in tap water. Water soluble compounds don’t tend to build up in the body, so that’s not a means by which the low levels would become dangerous over time.

Manhattan, when Columbia University was the first big development uptown, back before they flattened the island with dynamite and used the gravel to fill in its several swampy rivers was…farmland!

I want to dig up the picture of Columbia with plowed fields all around it…but I only have my own copy, and copyright is likely over on it by now, so I’ll upload it:
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i14/SnickSnack/Columbia/?action=view&current=lowcorn.jpg

And here are the water towers, thanks to Google:
http://www.bilderbook.org/tag_e_book/newyork_water_towers/pictures/

Help (gurgle gurgle gurgle) ……

lol… I am well aware of the various toxicological issues in the environment, and am in full agreement with the belief that there are true risks out there, and very likely subtle effects that we have no idea about yet. I did my Master’s thesis on the use of goldfish as sentinal species for detecting possible detrimental effects of treated sewage effluent and reuse water (primarily due to the presence of pharmaceuticals and personal care products, as well as pesticides).

Endocrine disruptors are a major issue in many parts of the world, of this I have no doubt. But there are also a number of studies that have shown no effect of sewage effluent exposure on fish physiology, or inconclusive results. I’m not casting doubt on the studies that have shown positive effects, not at all (well, most of them, lol), but I’m just saying that when working with any biological system things are never simple. And we must look at all information with a critical eye. Neither laboratory nor field studies alone are sufficient to definitively determine whether a compound is harmful or safe.

These are real issues, I 100% agree with you. But if we automatically cry wolf at any contaminant we find in the environment the public will become desensitized and not react as they should when a major toxicological issue comes about.

If you want to hear (what sounded to me like) a rock solid case regarding the negative effects of a compound we put into the environment at a rate of millions of tons a year. Atrazine is a pesticide used to kill weeds in food crops. It has been shown to cause major reproductive deformities in frogs, delay development of tadpoles, induce stress and immunosuppression, among many other effects.

I recently attended a fantastic lecture by Dr. Tyrone Hayes (out of Berkley), who has been involved in many of these atrazine studies on frogs. Watch this (older) lecture of his. It’s worth your time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4lijvIjpRw

Arlington will not divulge what pharmaceutical showed up in their drinking water because

A: The details of Arlington’s water treatment are actually considered a matter of national security; Their system is not custom made but off-the-shelf and is shared by several other mid-sized cities in the United States and the details of that are a matter of public record (they had to bid it out); Revealing a particular chemical that they aren’t screening for would reveal the same for many other cities. Publicizing this exploit – in a system that can’t easily nor quickly be patched in all instances – would be ethically irresponsible. Parts of Arlington’s water supply comes, also, from the Ft. Worth municipal water supply, as Arlington grew, it incorporated previously un-incorporated parts of Tarrant county.

B: The pharmaceutical was detected at a few parts per billion or per trillion – trace amounts – far less than what you would pick up if you were, say, involved in kissing or having unprotected sex with someone being treated with the pharmaceuticals in question. You might pick up a comparable dose, or more if that person /sneezed/ on you, or you shook their hand and then wiped your eye.

C: Dallas and Fort Worth both have state-of-the-art water treatment and testing facilities. The water supply in North Texas comes, pretty exclusively, from publicly-accessible man-made reservoir lakes and for decades, someone poisoning those reservoirs has been a nightmare security scenario. We are in a drought condition and have been for many years, thanks to global warming patterns.

Our wastewater treatment plants put the treated sewage right back into those reservoirs. The same can be said of So. California.

Ozarka bottles their water – the water they deliver in five, three, and one gallon bottles as well as the 20-ozers – out of the Ft. Worth municipal water supply and filter and test it fairly thoroughly before they ship it out.

What’s the answer? Well, probably the answer is to start catching more rain and filtering and treating it for use as drinking water. There’s upgrading wastewater treatment – which is expensive. And, of course, there’s giving people fewer drugs in the first place.

See, I would have just blamed it on a lack of rain.

This may explain lots more than just the cluster of idiots on the road whom I assumed had a prescription.

i wonder if there will be a special type of home filtering system to black out such substances like PUR water filtering systems.

Your outrageous and antisocial comments are entirely inconsistent with the noble goals and glorious spirit of the Union of Soviet Capitalist Republics! Please retract them at once, or our heroic Department of Homeland Security will be forced to take measures which we cannot disclose.

This is a big political issue right now, and there’s a lot of money being spent on it. I know, because we get a little bit of it. But it’s honestly not the type of terrorist attack I’d be most concerned about.

Even attacking treated water (say, at a reservoir within the distribution network, or by pumping water back into a fire hydrant) requires a LOT of contaminant if you’re trying to kill more than a handful of people. Obtaining the contaminant and successfully delivering it would be far more difficult than, for example, setting off a few bombs at a sporting event. While it’s not totally infeasible, it’s still more of a movie plot sort of attack.

I only feel good about my job because I know that if what we’re working on works, it will catch REAL health threats, like e. coli and cryptosporidium. A lot of people in the water business feel the same way – they’ll take the money in the name of homeland security if it means improving quality and safety in normal operations.

If you’re worried about contamination, get a reverse osmosis system for your tap, and keep it maintained properly.

In general, it’s a good idea to avoid flushing one’s excess pharmaceuticals. Take them back to your pharmacy and they’ll process them as the hazardous waste they are.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080310/D8VAMMLO0.html

In fact, they have a little note on trace pharmaceuticals in the water, too. Just updated today. Way to be sensitive to the news on teh internets, DW! Here’s what they said:

Denver Water decided to be proactive and participate in some of the earliest research projects looking for microconstituents (a project with Colorado State University in 2005). We did NOT find any estrogenic compounds but did detect trace amounts of antibiotics and pharmaceuticals at part per trillion concentrations (one part per trillion is equivalent to one drop of water in twenty Olympic-sized swimming pools).

-CP

Firstly, sewage treatment facilities were designed to eliminate fecal coliforms (E. coli, etc) and to reduce ammonia levels, nitrates, nitrites, etc – the vast majority of treatment facilities do not even have the capacity to target xenobiotics (man made chemicals) for removal. If they have denitrification capabilities by bacterial colonies (secondary or tertiary treatment) the concentration of these chemicals CAN be reduced, but how much really depends on the compound and the sludge retention time. Bacteria often cannot break down a chemical if they have never evolved the ‘machinery’ to recognize it in the first place.

Scientists have really only known about, and thus been concerned about the presence of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in sewage effluent or the receiving environment within the last 15 years or so. Sewage treatment plants were often designed and built way before this.

Secondly, regarding a method to remove these chemicals from drinking water, it’s as simple as an activated carbon filter! (also used in fish tanks and brita water filters).

#17: “From this article: “More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in surface waters throughout the world.”"

Just because you can detect a compound in the environment does not necessarily mean it will have an effect on an organism in that environment. Animals have many physiological ways to deal with toxic/dangerous compounds – it is only when these defense mechanisms get overwhelmed that damage/negative effects occur in the animal.

This does not mean that we should not be concerned about the chemicals we put into the environment, but we should also look at the concentrations at which these compounds are present within the environment and their active concentration within sensitive species before fully raising the alarm bells.

Working under THAT assumption, the govt. wouldn’t want to warn the public about ANYTHING since it might tip off wanna be terrorists.

I agree with the poster Vib’s take… we’re moving towards a country where mere civilians are second class citizens.

It seems more likely that they don’t want to disclose this information because they want to protect some corporation from legal action.

I would only add that Water Security is probably going to be the hottest issue in the coming decade. The concept covers much more than ‘security’ in the post-911 sense; it includes a variety of broad principles such as:
- protection of the entire watershed/basin (the area of land that receives the precipitation that will feed the water source), including the regulation of land-use
- protection of well heads and groundwater
- in some cases, barring access to especially sensitive areas
- encouraging the conservation of water, enacting legislation if neccessary

I can’t think of a single issue that is more vital and yet so completely neglected… it’s crazy that an article like this should come as a surprise. Environmental scientists have known about aquatic pollution with synthetic estrogenic substances since the 1980s, and we’ve been measuring detectable levels of pharmaceuticals (prozac, viagra, etc) in sewage effluent and fish since the late 90s. I’m relieved the word is finally starting to get out.

Example: during the 1993 Milwaukee outbreak that led to 403,000 people getting sick and 100-150 deaths, the water supply was repeated tested. Not once during the outbreak did the water supply violate EPA standards- which led to some initial resistance to the notion that the water supply was responsible. We now know that the causative agent was Cryptosporidium, and that existing testing facilities were not equipped to detect them. Since 1993, we now understand that Crypto is almost universally present in our water supply- it’s one of the reasons people buy home filtration systems.

What really worries me is that we may be heading for another Milwaukee- a slower, more insidious kind of mass poisoning, one that doesn’t pop up on the regulatory radar until it’s too late.