Dirty mouth: Water may not be clean

By Aly Van Dyke

Monday, September 14, 2009

Marc Kingston, Leawood senior, said he refused to drink bottled water.

“It’s expensive,” he said. “Why waste money when I can get it for free from the tap?”

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Instead he drinks four glasses a day straight from the kitchen sink.

Kimberly Tate, Lawrence senior, however, switched from drinking tap water to using a Pur water filter.

“I figured a filter might help remove the crap in tap water a little bit,” she said.

But whether it’s filtered, bottled or straight from the tap, all drinking water contains small amounts of unwanted substances, some of which can be found in your medicine cabinet.

“Research has shown that there can be pharmaceuticals in the water,” said Jeanette Klamm, spokeswoman for the Lawrence Utilities Department. “But it’s too soon to know what the effects are going to be.”

The University purchases its water from the Lawrence Water Treatment Plant, which treats water from Clinton Lake and the Kansas River.

Klamm said the Lawrence Water Treatment Plant didn’t test for pharmaceuticals on a regular basis because no Environmental Protection Agency regulations required it to do so. She said she wasn’t certain when Lawrence last tested the water for pharmaceuticals.

According to the EPA, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, or PPCPs, range from prescription and over-the-counter drugs to lotions and cosmetics. As of 2007, more than 100 PPCPs had been identified in environmental samples and drinking water. Oftentimes, drugs enter the water supply when people flush their unwanted pharmaceuticals.

Although the first study of PPCPs in rivers was nearly 30 years ago, it has been only within the past decade that equipment and testing methods have been advanced enough for scientists to detect the drugs, according to officials.

Research also has shown that conventional water treatment methods are only moderately successful in completely removing the drugs.

Concerns of experts in this field center on long-term, cumulative effects of exposure to a variety of unwanted supplements, which to date remain unknown.

With the studies leaving more questions than answers, no standards yet exist to regulate safe levels of exposure to pharmaceuticals in our drinking water.

Concerns

One of the major concerns of pharmaceuticals in drinking water is the cumulative effects of ingesting unintended substances during a long period of time.

As Christian Daughton, an EPA scientist and authority on PPCPs in water supplies, said in his 2008 study, “Simultaneous exposure to multiple drugs, each significantly below its individual ‘safe’ level, could result in combined action as a result of additive or interactive effects.”

Craig Adams, chair of the civil, environmental and architectural engineering department with the University, said although he thought most concentrations of pharmaceuticals weren’t high enough to harm humans, there were two exceptions — antibiotics and hormone compounds.

The presence of antibiotics can build up antibiotic resistance, making the drug less effective in treating patients.

The presence of hormone compounds, such as estrogen, can disrupt metabolism and sexual development in children.

“Hormonal compounds have extreme power on our endocrine system at extremely low concentrations,” he said.

Hormone compounds probably have no effect on adults because they are no longer developing, but there is no research on the subject yet.

Adams said he still thought drinking tap water was as safe or safer than drinking bottled water.

Mike Meyer, a research geochemist with the Lawrence office of the U.S. Geological Survey, presented a third concern. He said he wondered whether filtering the pharmaceuticals could change their chemical makeup into more hazardous forms.

Environmental contamination

According to Daughton, pharmaceuticals primarily enter the environment one of two ways: throwing pills down the drain and performing bodily functions.

The primary route is through routine bodily functions, such as urination, and when chemicals wash off our bodies when we bathe.

“The active ingredients of pharmaceuticals have probably long been present in drinking water ever since pharmaceuticals first came into widespread use,” Daughton said in an e-mail. “Their presence is a direct result of their intended use.”

The human body doesn’t metabolize medications completely. Studies have shown that up to 90 percent of some oral medicines can pass through the human body unchanged.

Daughton said the second route PPCPs enter the water system was when people threw their unwanted pills down the drain.

Adams said people could focus on preventing pharmaceuticals from ending up in the environment by prescribing correct doses, prescribing medication only when it is needed and properly disposing of pharmaceuticals.

Instead, Watkins Memorial Health Center Chief Pharmacist Cathy Thrasher said pharmaceuticals should be handled as hazardous materials. Unwanted drugs should either be taken to the Watkins Pharmacy or to the City of Lawrence/Douglas County Household Hazardous Waste Facility, 711 E. 23rd St.

Both facilities accept pills free of charge.

Water filtration solution

According to the EPA, PPCPs stay in the environment, particularly in the water, because the chemicals don’t dissolve easily or “evaporate at normal temperatures and pressures.”

PPCPs return to the drinking water because methods used today aren’t capable of removing all the compounds, Adams said. He said one of the least effective methods in removing pharmaceuticals was by using powdered activated carbon, which is what the Lawrence Water Treatment Plant uses to filter its water.

Although that method removes volatile organic compounds such as pesticides and industrial toxins, Adams said, the method is not as successful in removing drugs from the water system.

Suzanne Rudzinski, EPA deputy director for Science and Technology in the Office of Water, said the most effective methods for the removal of pharmaceuticals from drinking water were also the most expensive, reaching potentially billions of dollars in investment.

One example she cited was using reverse osmosis to filter water, which could cost millions of dollars for an individual city, according to Bob Mesick, a designer with Remco Engineering, a water treatment system manufacturer out of Ventura, Calif.

Klamm said the Lawrence plant was not looking to change its system for the time being.

Studies

Adams and a team of environmental researchers examined raw and finished drinking water from parts of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers this summer. Adams’ study found small amounts, measured in parts per trillion, of several PPCPs, the most prevalent being caffeine, antibiotics and ibuprofen.

Adams is not the first to discover PPCPs in drinking water. Previous research determined that:

-- 80 percent of 139 streams in 30 states contained at least one contaminant; 54 percent had more than five contaminants; and 13 percent had more than 20 contaminants, according to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey from 1999 to 2000.

-- Of 20 drinking water facilities, all contained the insect repellant DEET in their raw samples, and 90 percent contained it in their treated samples. More than 65 percent of the treated samples also included anti-anxiety medication, anti-seizure medication, ibuprofen and a radiation-blocking agent, according to a 2007 study by the American Water Works Association Research Foundation.

-- More than half of 20 U.S. drinking water facilities in a 2008 EPA study contained at least three contaminants: 83 percent included an herbicide chemical, 78 percent included an anti-anxiety medication, and 56 percent had an antiepileptic medication.

However, these studies determine exposure, not the potential harm that could come from it. And until more is known about the toxicity of exposure levels of these pharmaceuticals recurring in drinking water supplies, Rudzinski said, the EPA would wait to release any formal regulations of the substances.

In the meantime, the EPA is developing test methods and determining successful ways to remove the pharmaceuticals from the drinking water.

“The City of Lawrence is keeping our eyes and ears open to make sure we do the right thing,” said Aurora Shields, water quality manager for the City of Lawrence.

— —Edited by Abbey Strusz

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Comments

pantheon (anonymous) says...

It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works. Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water? Do I look all rancid and clotted? You look at me, Jack. Eh? Look, eh? And I drink a lot of water, you know. I'm what you might call a water man, Jack - that's what I am. And I can swear to you, my boy, swear to you, that there's nothing wrong with my bodily fluids. Not a thing, Jackie.

September 14, 2009 at 8:39 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

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