Drinking water contaminated by excreted drugs

Drinking Water Contamination by Excreted Drugs - Testing for Prescription Drugs in Drinking Water

What happens when excreted drugs get into drinking water?

CBC News: The National

Report from Waterloo, Ontario about Drugs found in drinking water.

Video Transcript:

0:00
pain killers blood thinners and
0:02
chemotherapy drugs are just some of the
0:04
substances that are found in your
0:05
drinking water there’s new information
0:08
that some drugs are ending up in our
0:10
water at levels never seen before
0:12
CBC’s Kelly Crowe has more on that
0:16
there’s something happening to the
0:18
rainbow darter a tiny fish that lives in
0:21
the rivers of southern Ontario if
0:23
they’re downstream from a sewage
0:25
treatment plant the male fish turn into
0:28
females if you expose them to waste
0:31
water they will feminized they will have
0:33
eggs in the testes what’s causing the
0:36
males to develop eggs human hormones
0:38
residue from prescription drugs that are
0:41
flushed into the river using new highly
0:44
sensitive equipment scientists are
0:46
finding an increasing variety of
0:47
prescription drugs in the water weights
0:50
painkillers blood thinners chemotherapy
0:52
agents hormones antibiotics if we
0:55
swallow it scientists can find it in the
0:58
water some of the drug comes in US and
1:00
through us and out of us
1:02
totally unchanged so we actually have
1:04
active drugs going into the waterway it
1:07
through our urine or feces last month
1:09
the study of First Nations communities
1:11
found levels of three prescription drugs
1:13
in one southern Ontario river that were
1:15
the highest in North America and an
1:17
unpublished Health Canada survey of tap
1:19
water across the country found traces of
1:21
prescription drugs in drinking water
1:22
mark servos is the lead author there are
1:26
pharmaceuticals as we suspected that are
1:30
widely distributed in surface water is
1:32
going into drinking water plants and
1:33
very low concentrations are detectable
1:36
but the concentrations are are very very
1:39
low because the drugs show up in such
1:41
tiny traces it would take hundreds of
1:44
glasses of water before someone would be
1:46
exposed to even a normal dose of the
1:48
drug they’re very low in concentrations
1:51
on the other hand we have to be
1:54
concerned because there’s a mixture of
1:56
these drugs that were being exposed to
1:58
in drinking water and so that’s some
2:01
cause for concern scientists still don’t
2:04
know if that combination of drugs in
2:06
water poses a human health risk that
2:08
research has not been done the World
2:10
Health Organization calls it a knowledge
2:13
gap
2:13
in Canada there are no national
2:15
standards for pharmaceuticals in
2:17
drinking water but Environment officials
2:19
are working on a water quality guideline
2:21
for carbamazepine an antiepileptic drug
2:23
that shows up almost everywhere Kelley
2:26
Crowe CBC News Toronto

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