Old expired medications

@billytex1: Before you quote these "recent studies" ... consider how many pills / day might be flushed in your city and how much drinking water is provided by your city each day. The amount that the meds are diluted is amazing. There are lots of other things in your water you need to worry about more !!!

See my response earlier ... when he was in college, my Dad had a homework assignment to debunk the terrorists dumping LSD into the city water system ... Once you do the math, you realize it's not nearly as much of a concern as you might have first thought.

@NCCindy: what??? Science and math???

@Cowboybob: Hey ... I'm an engineer, Science and Math keep me very gainfully employed.

Lol. @NCCindy:

@NCCindy: recent studies here in MY city especially - showed traces of some of the most frequently prescribed meds, including painkillers like Oxycontin, anti depressants, birth control pills, diabetic meds like Metformin, blood pressure meds, and others - so this isn't just something I made up, OK???? There was a similar warning published in both the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram after the TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality) published their findings - and before you go off because you're a 'scientist', I've got degrees in geology, geophysics with minors in chem and bio - worked the oil industry and environmental work for 40+ years here - so I think I'm just a little better than the average joe off the street.

You ask about how many pills go down the toilet vs how much water a city consumes - how many pills per annum do you think it takes to titrate out eventually a dose level in a water supply that is readable in parts per million, anyhow?? Apparently enough of this 'flush it' occurs that that's just what's happening - these meds don't get filtered or decomposed by the filtering action that removes most other substances - and once in the water, it just concentrates.

Remember Lake Erie - if you were around then - industrial pollutants, in just parts per million quantities, were dumped into that body of water over decades and decades - nearly rendering one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world dead, literally - the mercury toxicity alone measured in fish was 300 times acceptable lifetime consumption levels.

NEVER throw active chemicals back into the water supply - EVER - ALWAYS dispose of such items properly. I'm both surprised and taken aback you'd claim to be a 'scientist' and have issue with my remarks - sort of contradictory here.

@billytex1: Healthy skepticism, but I'll take your word for it for now until I get to read these reports myself and decide if I believe it myself. I'll Google them when I have some time on my hands.

I would not be surprised if the amount of some of these drugs that ends up in the wastewater stream that was the result of the drug being excreted in urine is a lot higher than due to pills being flushed. Given drug costs today, I can't see that many pills getting flushed / day, but ... who knows ??? Back when I was on birth control pills, I was paying $30/cycle ... I assure that I didn't flush any.

Drinking water quality in many parts of the country is a problem. I won't deny that for a moment.

@NCCindy: thanks for your reply - my concern, especially from my days taking enviro health training in the oil industry (one of the reasons I got out of it) is way too many people don't really realize that our water system is completely closed - it's not replenished, replaced, or lost - it just continually recycles - and unless the system can somehow filter out all the crap we put into it, it's there - to stay. Lots of meds do eventually break down - but some are extremely stable, whether they're disposed of in their dispensed form, or wind up in the water supply via excretion.

I just want to help get people to understand what they throw into the toilet or down the sink isn't suddenly nobody's problem any more - it's all our problem - and it's getting worse by the day. We've become way too 'throw away' a society - and eventually our society will pay for it.