koganbot | Things to worry about today number one: Drug Traces Common In Drinking Water

According to AP story Drug Traces Common In Tap Water (title a bit misleading, since the drug traces may well be common in filtered and bottled water too; and by drugs they also mean hormones and the like, pharmaceuticals in general)

Summary:

--Trace amounts of drugs, hormones, etc. are common in drinking water sources, including headwaters and aquifers (get into the environment from humans and livestock excreting the pharmaceuticals into sewage and from leakage in manufacturing)
--The long-term effects of these traces of pharmaceuticals on humans and other living things is not well understood, but studies of wildlife are disturbing (e.g., male fish developing female characteristics), and medications are of special concern because most are designed to work on the human body - this doesn't mean that they're necessarily dangerous in these trace amounts but rather that we don't know
--There are no standards or regulations regarding their presence
--There isn't extensive screening yet to see how much is in the water
--There are no current sewage systems designed to remove pharmaceuticals
--The current technologies that could remove the pharmaceuticals may be prohibitively inefficient and expensive

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This does actually seriously worry me; my housemates and I were having a discussion re: the number of women on the pill concetrated in London and consequent concentration of female hormones in Thames Water supplies etc. ...I wonder how long that'll be allowed to go on, since the female hormones in the pill have extremely negative and potentially fatal (stroke) side effects for me and if I was to consume a large quantity of the tap water, over time it would presumably kill me and everyone else with the same intolerance. The fact it'd make everyone infertile aside, obviously.

It's particularly the female hormones that worry me, since they're sort of... unnecessary isn't totally the word but they're non-essential. I mean, obviously the other drugs are a concern but in particular in this country there are a hell of a lot of people taking hormones and indeed it's virtually NHS policy to hand the pill to any female under 40 that goes to the doctor, just in case.

i think you'd have to drink a heck of a lot of water dearest...

Oh yeah, obviously currently it's not at a particularly dangerous level at all. However, if it were to continue unchecked etc.

ah, we'll all be dead by then anyway ;)

Well, the argument is that everybody drinks water every day, so trace amounts over many years can have a real effect, and we just don't know what it is (but there's worry about fish and amphibians, and since these drugs are designed for humans and livestock, and have side effects, and often have strange effects when combined...).

but i think we're talking like fractions of parts per million aren't we?

at least there's no cholera in it...

Well, they don't know if the levels are dangerous, actually. Not dangerous for one swallow, but for sustained consumption over years (and it's not as if we can choose not to ingest H2O).

I hear you re: hormones - even normal fluctuations hit me up good and proper, artificial doses are actually unbearable for me. However I think other London-related health risks (eg air pollution, stress, terrorism) outweigh the hormone thing.

Hmmm. I don't doubt that dudes are more infertile these days because of hormones in drinking water, but if you think about it, if everyone's on the pill anyway then clearly they *don't* want to get preggers? I guess it's a bit much asking everyone who is trying to conceive to start chugging away on Evian though. I dunno.

Results 1 - 10 of about 19,700 for "sperm counts" dropping worldwide. (0.30 seconds)

My initial (and rather cynical) reaction is to think that this worry - or at least the anti-tap spin on the story - is coming at a very good time for the bottled water companies, who are in a tough position at the moment because their core buyers are also the people who are most likely to give up an environmentally unjustifiable product.

That's not to say it isn't a genuine concern, obviously.

Well, they're saying that it's probably in the bottled water too.

Oops yes, missed that paragraph! (And "even in the North Sea" that internationally known resource for clean water)

(But N. Sea waters contribute to cloud formation which then rains in, like, Glasgow and Stockholm, thus affecting pop music.)

I tend to assume that there is all sorts of badness in the North Sea and Channel anyway. If it's stuffed with pharmaceuticals I blame the Dutch and their so-called liberalism.

By the way, the pharmaceutical traces have been found in Alpine springs and in the North Sea.

low sperm count = gaian population recalibration!

i've been rereading lots of late 50s early 60s science fiction: blimey they were gung ho back then for the next-stage evolutionary mutation (strangely it always involves become more like an insect)

What do you think of Jefferson Airplane's "Crown of Creation" (quotes from John Wyndham's Chrysalids)?

it always involves become more like an insect

Or developing powers of telepathy!

Wiki:

Wyndham's science fiction may be considered trendsetting in its insistence that interplanetary catastrophes do not just happen to "other people" (e.g. those best-equipped to face them) and would in fact be extremely difficult for our delicate and highly interconnected civilisation to deal with. Similarly ahead of its time is the emphasis that Wyndham put on disruptions to the biosphere as a whole

The results are always grim, as we rational beings, most notably in Kraken, at every step attempt to rationalize extraordinary situations into our present day view of our planet. In this sense Wyndham exposes our rationality as purely protective, and, in the end, detrimental. Only when no hope is left can we actually face facts - this is just when hope presents itself as one last flicker of the human potential.

i don't really remember what happenes in the chrysalids (i can kind of guess!)

bowie's "oh you pretty things" is based on the midwich cuckoos (i believe)

Post nuclear war, the area of "Labrador" has developed to level of early 19th-century agrarian, surrounded by badlands and beyond that wastelands, though badlands are slowly becoming more habitable and civilization has started encroaching in this frontier area; the badlands populated by outcasts and mutants, who are being pushed back. The two pieces of written matter that survived nuclear holocaust were Bible and a book describing the correct human form. Protaganists Fundamentalist type religion dominates, the theology including the idea that the devil attempts to imitate animals and plants and humans, but not being the lord God himself always screws up, so mutations are signs that the creature was created by the Devil. Some politics in deciding that large horses and special crops owned by influential landowners are fine rather than mutant. Main character is boy who befriends girl with six toes. She is eventually discovered and banished. He also in the evening goes to his backyard and talks to his gorgeous cousin. After a while we realize that she is not actually there with him in the backyard, that they are communicating telepathically. Sympathetic uncle figures this out. Boy and cousin become teens and fall in love. Boy has little sister whose telepathic powers outshout everyone else's. You can figure lots of plot from there.

not being the Lord God himself always screws up

That is, the devil not being God, he (the devil) always screws up in some way or another.

Things to worry about today number one: Drug Traces Common In Drinking Water

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