Is your tap water drugged? Many states are reporting finding many types of drugs in public water supplies. How does water become contaminated with pharmaceuticals? You and your family could be ingesting any number of antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones every time you take a drink of your tap water.
In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville
How these drugs get into the water supply is fairly simple, and “natural”. Patients take these drugs, the drugs go through the body and any unused or byproduct of these drugs goes into the waste water supply. While waste water is treated, the treatment does not remove these toxins from the water supply.Other ways of removing drug residue from water supply can do more harm than good.
In Minnesota for example, pharmaceuticals are found in four rivers and 11 lakes. The amounts of contamination are alarming and officials are working hard to find the cause and a way to filter these contaminants from the water supply. A total of 27 chemicals were found in the lakes they studied. In the rivers, they found 56 chemicals downstream of four wastewater treatment plants, and 33 chemicals upstream of those plants.
States are not required to report the drugs found in their water supplies. They rarely just supply this information without an official request.
So how do you know if there are drugs in your tap water? Well the simple answer is you really don’t. The best way to insure the safety of our drinking water is to use a high quality home water filter.
Sources: AP: Drugs Found In Drinking Water
MPR News, Study of Minnesota Lakes Finds wide spread drug contamination.