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