Home
Newsletter
Events
Blogs
Reports
Graphics
RSS
About Us
Support
Write for Us
Media Info
Advertising Info
Prescription drugs

Antidepressant drugs found in drinking water; pharmaceuticals have now become environmental pollutants

Thursday, August 19, 2004
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: prescription drugs, pharmaceutical industry, drinking water


Most Viewed Articles
https://www.naturalnews.com/001891.html
Delicious
diaspora
Print
Email
Share

Pharmaceuticals are now being found in drinking water, according to a study conducted in England. The study looked at 12 pharmaceuticals thought to pose an environmental threat, including painkillers, antibiotics, and antidepressants, and it found traces of these pharmaceuticals in both sewage waters and drinking water. It also found traces in the rivers downstream from the sewage treatment plants.

This is shocking information -- apparently we are dosing ourselves with such high levels of pharmaceuticals that we are now collectively polluting the rivers, streams and even the drinking water for the mass public. Even though this study was conducted in the U.K., there's little doubt that much of the same story would be found here in the United States as well. Why? Because in the United States, these drugs are also being prescribed at alarming levels, and after people take these drugs, they are, of course, entering the sewage treatment centers and being dumped into the rivers and streams that later on are used to make drinking water for people downstream. (Which reminds me, check out a book entitled, "Living Downstream" if you want the details on what's really going on with our rivers these days...)

All of this comes down to the mass medication of the public with trace amounts of prescription drugs. In another words, if you're drinking tap water that's tainted with these drugs, you're getting a little bit of Prozac whether you like it or not. And since we now know that antidepressant drugs promote violent behavior, including suicides and homicides, there's justified alarm at the idea that we're going to medicate the entire country with trace amounts of antidepressant drugs in one grand experiment. Maybe we'll just dump all of these drugs into the water supply, and step back and see what happens. There's already been talk of dumping statin drugs into the water supply because they are presumably so good for your health that everyone should be taking them whether they like it or not.

All of this brings up an issue that has been largely ignored by the pharmaceutical companies, and that is: what is the environmental impact of the mass prescription and mass consumption of their drugs? If millions upon millions of people are taking these drugs, then the environmental impact is potentially quite large. These drugs are, of course, synthetically produced, highly toxic chemicals that not only impact the health of human beings, but also potentially compromise the health of fish and creatures in our oceans. This could be one of the reasons why ocean life is continuing to decline around the world, and it seems like it won't be very long at all before these prescription drug pollutants start showing up in shrimp, crab, lobsters and perhaps someday, even in seaweed. If you thought mercury poisoning was bad, just wait until you hear the announcement that shrimp is contaminated with Prozac.

Interestingly, most pharmaceutical chemicals are not regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, and thus there is no enforced limit of pharmaceuticals in the drinking water. In fact, in the United States, there is no government agency that is even testing the level of pharmaceuticals in public drinking water on a regular basis. So it is possible, and in fact likely that these levels will continue to rise in the years ahead without being detected or reported to the public at all.

Of course, as I've often said on this site, if you're drinking tap water, you're probably quite foolish to begin with. Most people reading this aren't drinking tap water, and thank goodness for that, because prescription drugs are just one of the many potential toxic pollutants in tap water. You certainly don't want to be consuming this stuff -- instead, you want to be drinking spring water or filtered water, using a quality water filter such as a carbon block filter or a reverse osmosis filter. Distilled water is also good for drinking.

If you're not drinking tap water, the potential for exposure to these toxic pharmaceutical chemicals in the water is remote. If you're showering in water that has some tiny amount of Prozac in it, for example, chances are you're not going to be absorbing a very high dose of Prozac, or at least not high enough to the point where it would be biologically active.

But sadly, most of the population is drinking tap water, and that's where this is a real concern. Just as America Online is now being increasingly questioned over the environmental impact of their tens of millions of free CDs each year that are distributed all over the country, I think it is reasonable now for pharmaceutical companies to answer to the justified accusation that they are manufacturing and releasing toxic chemicals into the environment through human customers. The fact that these toxic chemicals move through the bodies of human first doesn't make them any less toxic to our environment. They should be regulated by the EPA, and they should not be allowed in our rivers and streams, and in a very real sense, pharmaceutical companies should be held financially responsible for the environmental damage caused by their chemical products.

Another interesting thought on all of this is that many plant fertilizer products and soil products contain treated biosludge, which also contains, of course, human waste. These biosludge soil and fertilizer products will also undoubtedly be found to contain levels of pharmaceuticals such as Prozac, Viagra, statin drugs, and antidepressant drugs. The question then becomes, what happens when you start growing crops in these soils? Are these drugs neutralized by the plants, or are they in some way absorbed by the plants where they once again enter the food chain when human beings consume those plants? Is there any regulation of the use of biosludge fertilizers that contain toxic pharmaceutical chemicals?

Sadly, we are increasingly living in a world that is polluted not only by heavy metals, PCBs, and emissions from gasoline engines, we are now living in a world where even our water is polluted with pharmaceutical chemicals which is a direct result of the reckless and widespread prescription of pharmaceuticals by practitioners of conventional medicine. Once again, it seems that as long as there are profits to be made, everybody in the pharmaceutical industry is happy, regardless of the negative impact on the environment. In fact, I don't think you even hear much talk at all these days about pharmaceutical companies working to protect the environment. It's pretty much just, "Here, take this drug, pay us $100 a pill, and then flush it down the toilet. After that, we don't want to think about it anymore."


Receive Our Free Email Newsletter

Get independent news alerts on natural cures, food lab tests, cannabis medicine, science, robotics, drones, privacy and more.




About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

comments powered by Disqus



Natural News Wire (Sponsored Content)

Science.News
Science News & Studies
Medicine.News
Medicine News and Information
Food.News
Food News & Studies
Health.News
Health News & Studies
Herbs.News
Herbs News & Information
Pollution.News
Pollution News & Studies
Cancer.News
Cancer News & Studies
Climate.News
Climate News & Studies
Survival.News
Survival News & Information
Gear.News
Gear News & Information
Glitch.News
News covering technology, stocks, hackers, and more