Drugs

©  2008  Rose George

The Associated Press has a thing about sewage. A few months ago, it did a very good piece on biosolids and the allegations of ill-health associated with its application to farmland which despite the best efforts of the biosolids industry continue to swirl and rise. (It was supposed to be a series, but nothing else ever appeared, puzzlingly.) AP has also been looking at pharmaceuticals in sewage. Read it, and you’ll wonder why you never thought about this before. All those drugs from all those patients in all those hospitals; of course they’re going somewhere. Down the toilet, like much else. It is ironic that medications are strictly regulated and prescribed by doctors, but once in wastewater – and after treatment, in drinking water – there is essentially a pharmaceutical free-for-all. They are trace elements, admittedly, but scientists have found that trace elements damage and warp fish, frogs and other aquatic creatures. Unused drugs being dumped down drains and toilets is one thing (and that’s not illegal, by the way). Another is that patients’ excrement is of course liable to be loaded with germs. A typical, scary paragraph: “In tests of wastewater retrieved near other European hospitals and one in Davis County, Utah, scientists were able to link drug dumping to virulent antibiotic-resistant germs and genetic mutations that may promote cancers, according to scientific studies reviewed by the AP.” And another one: “At the University of Rouen Medical Center in France, 31 of 38 wastewater samples showed the ability to mutate genes. [....] Pharmacist Boris Jolibois, one of the French researchers at Compiegne Medical Center, believes hospitals should act quickly, even before the effects are well understood. “Something should be done now,” he said. “It’s just common sense.”" An excellent piece of investigation.