Your drinking water is going to KILL YOU

[Lee Chambers]

Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water
AP
Posted: 2008-03-09 21:42:14
Filed Under: Health News, Nation News, Science News
(March 9) - A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

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.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.

Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed.

Read the rest HERE.

Personally I think this story is bullshit and serves only one purpose: To scare the shit out of people.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Personally I think this story is bullshit and serves only one purpose: To scare the shit out of people.

No, it serves only one purpose, to sell newspapers. "If it bleeds, it leads"--the Journalists' Credo.

 

[DesertPirate]

If you paid serious attention to all of that you would find that:
You can't drink the water
You can't eat the food
You can't breath the air

Then they found AIDs to take away the last thing you could do

If all of this was true, why would anyone want to live?

 

[rgraham666]

Meh. I've got bigger things to worry about.

 

[starrkers]

Meh. I've got bigger things to worry about.

They're poisoning your water and you don't care?

Oh, hang on. They're poisoning the US drinking water and you don't care. That makes perfect sense.http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y286/starrcats/smilies/runaway.gif

 

[Huckleman2000]

I don't see the level of alarmism in the story that others do, apparently. Nothing in the article makes me think my drinking water will kill me. It sounds like a valid area for more study. *shrug*

 

[xssve]

Probobly hope to sell more bottled water - which is just rendering other parts of the world unlivable by depleting their water tables. All that shit is in food too thanks to industrial farming, and we're headed for major ecological disaster within a century or so if it keep s up, and it shows no indications of slowing down - we're a selfish lot.

I''d be more concerned with exposure to heavy metals, which can cause profound behavioral effects, and are particuarly toxic to children.

If you live in an urban area where there was heavy traffic back before unleaded gasoline, lead has probobly accumulated on every available surface - It's been about 30 years so most of it has probobly been washed off, but there are still pockets. Lead poisioning can lead to learning disabilites and anti social behavior disorders including psychopathy.

If you are concerned, get together with your concerned freinds and have soem local water tested independently, particuarly, do a metals analysis - you can have it done yourself, but it's not cheap - installing a reverse osmosis water treatment apparatus should take care of most stuff.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Personally I think this story is bullshit and serves only one purpose: To scare the shit out of people.

Hear hear. As with all similar stories.

Ditto to Manque.

I saw a cartoon, a sign in a supermarket aisle, pointing at some food item:
"No longer not good for you!"

~~~

BTW, here's my "screen" for such stories: I delete them unless they include:
1. Actual results from a large, statistically signifigant sample of real people
2. The study is longitudinal (carried on over many years)
3. The people are like me (Laplanders who subsist primarily on reindeer meet may have a different reaction to the supposedly 'bad for you' thing and people like me.)

If those three things are not present I move along.

 

[Weird Harold]

They're poisoning your water and you don't care?

Oh, hang on. They're poisoning the US drinking water and you don't care. That makes perfect sense.http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y286/starrcats/smilies/runaway.gif

Nope, I don't care about the miniscule parts-per-trillion leftovers from upstream sewage treatment plants. (that's an american Trillion: 1,000,000,000,000 or 10^12.)

I'm more concerned that the drugs they're detecting are apparently so hard to metabolize that neither passing through patient or the enzyme and bacteria and fermentation of a modern sewage treatment plant can break them down.

Xssve: the majority of bottled water sold in the US is simply re-filtered municipal water and I'd be really surprised if the re-filtering removed the minute amounts of drugs that the article cites. Like the original article says:

the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed.

The only way to remove every possible contaminant is to distill every drop of water supplied by municipal water systems and re-plumb entire distribution systems with glass or ceramic piping -- an uneconomical and unnecessary expense that would enrage water customers far more than six or seven stray molecules of upstream sewage.

 

[Lee Chambers]

Xssve: the majority of bottled water sold in the US is simply re-filtered municipal water and I'd be really surprised if the re-filtering removed the minute amounts of drugs that the article cites.

It doesn't, at least according to the story. If you read most of it (which I know it's really damn long) it basically says that no water supply has been untouched by this thing. Bottled water and even water from wells dug out in rural areas (I grew up on this type) contains these particulate drugs.

I don't see the level of alarmism in the story that others do, apparently. Nothing in the article makes me think my drinking water will kill me. It sounds like a valid area for more study. *shrug*

That's because you're being reasonable about this information. Not everyone who's going to read this is going to view it like that. There are a lot of people out there who buy into the myth that drinking bottled water is better for you than drinking tap water and they do nothing but drink bottled water. But when you tell them "By the way, your bottled water has a slew of drugs in it." they're not going to react well.

 

[Katyusha]

I don't see the level of alarmism in the story that others do, apparently. Nothing in the article makes me think my drinking water will kill me. It sounds like a valid area for more study. *shrug*

Our local news did a report on this today and it was far more alarmist than the article IMO. I get so sick of hearing stories like this because I agree with Lee and Voluptuary...they serve one purpose: to sell more papers and get more ratings, because scaring the shit out of people ALWAYS sells more papers and gets more ratings.

Everything is going to kill us one moment and is the best thing for us the next. Therefore everything is in between and we're all going to be fine.

 

[oggbashan]

Wikipedia

Extract from Wikipedia about reuse of water:

Unplanned Indirect Potable Use[3] has existed even before the introduction of reclaimed water. Many cities already use water from rivers that contain effluent discharged from upstream sewage treatment plants. There are many large towns on the River Thames upstream of London (Oxford, Reading, Swindon, Bracknell) that discharge their treated sewage into the river, which is used to supply London with water downstream. This phenomenon is also observed in the United States, where the Mississippi River serves as both the destination of sewage treatment plant effluent and the source of potable water. And in Australia, the water in the Murray River passes through so many agricultural areas and towns that when it reaches Adelaide, it is nearly undrinkable and tastes horrible. Research conducted in the 1960s by the London Metropolitan Water Board demonstrated that the maximum extent of recycling water is about 11 times before the taste of water induces nausea in sensitive individuals. This is caused by the build up of inorganic ions such as Cl-, SO42-, K+ and Na+, which are not removed by conventional sewage treatment.

No wonder Adelaide residents drink lager!

Og

 

[NoJo]

I think it's a Yippie consipracy

 

[starrkers]

Extract from Wikipedia about reuse of water:

Unplanned Indirect Potable Use[3] has existed even before the introduction of reclaimed water. Many cities already use water from rivers that contain effluent discharged from upstream sewage treatment plants. There are many large towns on the River Thames upstream of London (Oxford, Reading, Swindon, Bracknell) that discharge their treated sewage into the river, which is used to supply London with water downstream. This phenomenon is also observed in the United States, where the Mississippi River serves as both the destination of sewage treatment plant effluent and the source of potable water. And in Australia, the water in the Murray River passes through so many agricultural areas and towns that when it reaches Adelaide, it is nearly undrinkable and tastes horrible. Research conducted in the 1960s by the London Metropolitan Water Board demonstrated that the maximum extent of recycling water is about 11 times before the taste of water induces nausea in sensitive individuals. This is caused by the build up of inorganic ions such as Cl-, SO42-, K+ and Na+, which are not removed by conventional sewage treatment.

No wonder Adelaide residents drink lager!

Og

I've drunk water that ends up in the Murray most of my life. I'm currently about as far upstream on one of the tributaries as it's possible to get and I can tell you the water is still nearly undrinkable and tastes horrible.
Why do you think we have rainwater tanks?

 

[Guest]

Nah... lots of other things will get me first.

 

[cheerful_deviant]

Everything is eventual if you give it enough time:

All water is recycled sewage if you go back far enough.