"Minute concentrations over long periods can be worse than big single doses."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/03/10/pharm...1.ap/index.html

Even the lowly earthworm, and fish and other building blocks of our environment are being affected. You and your pets after you take medicines expel residuals into the water system. Modern treatment systems are not designed to remove pharma drugs. EPA doesn't even have good methods to detect and test for them. Worse yet, long term studies haven't even been fully completed to determine affects, but they know the effects are there affecting breast cancer cell growth, changing the sex of species such as fish, and on and on.

Human nerve cell damage can occur over time.

This is probably much worse than any global warming scenario might be, IF we think man-made garbage might even affect global warming. (FWIW : Man only causes 2% of the GHG, so the science behind GHG is quite skeptical at best.)

The implications of pharma in water are wide reaching and potentially game changing far sooner for our society.


As far as I'm concerned, filtered rainwater may be your best bet.

Filter your water with what? Carbon and reverse osmosis only work for certain compounds. Sorry that won't work. Its not only the pharmaceuticals, but the petrochemical derivatives, especially chlorinated solvents, that mimic estrogen, and absorb through the skin. You can be exposed taking a shower. Why do you think that 1 in 7 women now have breast cancer (that used to be 1 in 70), 8 year old girls are coming into puberty, and viagra is flying off he shelves. I own an environmental engineering firm, and we have known about these problems for years. We can test for petrochemical derivatives, but testing for pharmaceuticals is nearly impossible - except for a hand full of compounds that the labs have standards for. These are propriatary formulas - and labs would reveal the molecular structure (at least the mass/volume structure) if they analyzed them via GC/MS and made their own standard using a sample of the drug. We don't test for pharmaceuticals because there are no regulations. The EPA doesn't care if you drink Prozac or if fish change genders due to birth control pill residue in the lakes and rivers or if you need Viagra because your getting too much estrogen mimicing compounds.
Mary Anne

Again I am going to get in trouble with the boss.

This is a TRADING - INVESTING forum. NOT a general news forum. What does this have to do with trading/investing?
mss

There is so much prozac in the water, the last time I went fishing, the fish wouldn't even put up a fight.

But I didn't care.

(truth be told, viagra is needed because of hyperinsulinemia and diabetes ... those are the main reasons. If you look at any man with a big pot belly (insulin resistence) ... good chance he's impotent ... can't get it up or keep it up.

No you're not!

You're being promoted to Grand Poobah of all Moderators.

Post moved per your good sense.

Mark

The Viagra in the water supply causes hard water.

Stiff fines need to be imposed!

Limp politicians will flip and flop around and have no solid stance.