According to the Environmental Protection Agency, large quantities of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are entering our waterways. Environmental agencies used to believe that the source was primarily industrial and agricultural, but recent evidence points the finger at residential sources.
What do you do when you have unused prescription medications, or cosmetics, or common products such as sunscreen, medicated lotions, or aspirin? What about the cleaners, insecticides, herbicides? Many people flush these materials down the drain. Even when you don’t intend to send these chemicals down the drain, you may be. A large percentage of the pharmaceuticals you take in end up passing through your body unchanged. And all of these materials go straight to our waterways. Wastewater treatment plants neither detect them nor modify them. In many communities, putting them in the trash sends them to landfills, where they find their way into the soil or sometimes into groundwater.
Are they harmless to people? We don’t know. The amounts involved are small, so nobody has seen a need to test the effects of these low doses on people. But some studies suggest that we may be affected by even very small doses of these chemicals. Test on these drugs routinely look at the effects of medically prescribed dosages over very short periods. What is the effect of smaller doses over very long periods? And can all those antibiotics be creating super bacteria that are immune to treatment in hospitals? Keep in mind that we are not talking about just any pollutants. We’re talking about pollutants that are designed to have biological effects on people. The effects on humans are intentionally maximized. And what are the combined effects when these chemicals are mixed together? Again, nobody has checked.
Effects on the environment are more clear, although still not clear enough due to lack of research. Even extremely low levels of these drugs can disrupt the reproduction of fish, frogs, and other aquatic life. Salmon respond to very low levels of a common insectide by losing their ability to find their ancestral river when its time to spawn. Male frogs in Connecticut have been found to be carrying eggs in their reproductive tracts due to estrogen in the water. Some fish have been found to be switching gender in response to these hormones.
*In Pittsfield, waste is incinerated. There is no reason to flush household materials down the drain when a more sensible option is more readily available.