***WHY we Shouldn't FLUSH****

[NautyOne]

Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water
AP
Posted: 2008-03-09 21:42:14
Filed Under: Health News, Nation News, Science News
(March 9) - A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows


Philadelphia: 56 pharmaceuticals or pharmaceutical byproducts, including medicines used to treat pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems

this is just the small of it.

Nauty...............

[bandnmom]

I contributed pain pills to the water supply last week. Better the fish then me though. Thank good for Hinckley Springs water delivery! Thats all I drink. Added bonus..my water delivery guy is hot!! Love delivery day! LOL!!

[confused456]

OMG...that is so sad. How terrible. I agree....flush, and if u are on them for something like major surgery, lock 'em up nice and tight!!! Put em in a safe. That is so scary. My son ate a whole roll of rolaids the other day cuz they were on the piano. Thank God they did nothing bad to him, he thought it was candy and he can read and is 8 years old!!!!

[FAITHFUL74]

I would rather flush and let them disolve into millions and millions of gallons of water than for a child or pet find them and eat them... this really happened! A guy was buying pills off the street, left the bottle on the coffee table, his two year old managed to open and swallow many of them. Tragically... she died. Because he had no prescription for the drugs, he was found guilty of first degree murder on top of losing his daughter...
go ahead... feed the fish...

[NautyOne]

I flushed my ex husbands wedding ring down the toilet......hmm.  I wonder if its playing ring around the condom somewhere?????

[CleandUP]

Like GoingtoMakeit said, it depends on frequency exposures, risk factors, and concentrations. 500 pills is a lot but it will dissolve. A lot of things get flushed down the toilet, in fact the biggest problem waste water treatment plants have are CONDOMS. They don't dissolve and can not be consumed. shoot if you really worried you can crush them up and bury them somewhere. Either way, the pills will be exposed somewhere and I am almost 100% sure they will not affect drinking water. I am currently taking a class called Environmental Engineering and Science and have learned a lot about pollutants, water , and the environment. An example of a problem I have solved is kind of a situation like this: what would be safer in terms of cancer risk? 1)Drinking uncholorinated groundwater with 10 ppb (.010 mg/L) of TCE which is Trichloroethylene or 2) Switch to surface water supply that, as a result of chlorination, has a chloroform concentration of 50 ppb?

2 L/day*.010mg/L*360day/year all divided by 70 kg*360day/year*70 years. After doing that math, multiply by risk factors of chemical TCE: .001/mg/kg-day would equal out to be 1.3 x 10^-6 which is about 1 in a million persons would get cancer. See what I mean?





With exposure frequency of 350 days/year, you will get 1.29*10^-6 for TCE risk and 3.58*10^-6 for chloroform risk. They are all fine.

[avisg]

worried nooooooooooooo you have to take them and sprinkle all 500 all over the woods and make the squirrels VERY happy

[worried878]

So I can safely flush the 500 pills in my cabinet that I have been hording for a rainy day and not telling anyone about...LOL ...

[GoingToMakeIt]

I will be praying for you too. This is way too long for that kind of pain.

[avisg]

LOL noooooooo i wont turn you in ............


Nope i am the same wed is my HIDA scan cross your fingers that after that we should be able to contact a surgeon about removing the gallbladder .

[GoingToMakeIt]

Hey are you feeling any better yet?

[GoingToMakeIt]

Probably too true. You won't turn me in to the FDA, DEA or OSHA will you?

     Is there a drug recycling center? I bet that would be a joke...."Well I don't know how all those drugs got back on the street. It was a cost saving measure lobbied by the Governor." says anonymous informer. LOL

[avisg]

LOL you can still get rid of them just not down the toilet

[GoingToMakeIt]

I still say flush and make some fishees happy. It's better than being tempted to take them again.

[avisg]

PS don't throw your medications down the toilet

[GoingToMakeIt]

Effects of chlorine on human health depend on how the amount of chlorine that is present, and the length and frequency of exposure. Effects also depend on the health of a person or condition of the environment when exposure occurs.

Breathing small amounts of chlorine for short periods of time adversely affects the human respiratory system. Effects differ from coughing and chest pain, to water retention in the lungs. Chlorine irritates the skin, the eyes, and the respiratory system. These effects are not likely to occur at levels of chlorine that are normally found in the environment.

Human health effects associated with breathing or otherwise consuming small amounts of chlorine over long periods of time are not known. Some studies show that workers develop adverse effects from repeat inhalation exposure to chlorine, but others will not.
Plants and animals are not likely to store chlorine. However, laboratory studies show that repeat exposure to chlorine in air can affect the immune system, the blood, the heart, and the respiratory system of animals.

Chlorine causes environmental harm at low levels. Chlorine is especially harmful to organisms living in water and in soil.

To me, it is safer to error on the side of safety.

[avisg]

i would drink city water without a 2nd thought

[CleandUP]

Well being a civil engineering student and having to learn a lot about waste-water treatment..anything that gets flushed is considered "sewage". Sewage water is controlled by the Clean Water Act. which contains NPDES (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System). Waste water is treated by plants in a variety of ways including chemical treatment like chlorine, bacterial treatment (bacteria consumes bad bacteria). When it gets released back into a river or is stored, it is 99.9% fresh and safe drinking water. Pills have no effect to the environment when flushed.  

[avisg]

your bottled  water  has not been tested for many things there regulations are not nearly as strict . The water that goes threw the water treatment plant  has strict regulations it must adhere to ..( my mom is retired  supervising chemist for our city's water department )she wont thouch bottled water.

[GoingToMakeIt]

This is why I filter all of my house and then my drinking water is run through an ionized water filter machine. Chlorine in the shower is absorbed through your skin and lungs. Read up on the detrimental effects of chlorine. Not to mention all these other chemicals and pesticides.

[NautyOne]

lol......I guess it's only us rats that drink from the sewer.  Thanks for the explanation---duck--why am I still confused??  oh, well.  At least someone got a good chuckle out of my stupidity........gotta go to the bathroom and get a drink of water.  Good day all..........:-)

Nauty.............

[duckandcover]

Llke I said I work in this field and assist in the design of these systems for municipalaties.  Generally speaking, everything you flush goes to a treatment plant and gets turned into reuse water.  It's too dirty to drink but clean enough to let back out to nature.  They either spray it out into a field where it trickles through the earth and get further cleaned up eventually making it's way back to the aquifer.  Or they pump it to ponds (often on golf courses) Or they have (im many communities) specific re-use water lines strictly for watering your grass.  This is getting very popular in places like Florida.  Or they further treat it to better than drinking water standards and put it into lakes rivers or the ocean.

None of this happens if you have a septic tank though.  That's a whole other prcess.

[Olyaddict]

I know in our town there is a Sewage treatment plant that takes raw sewge, treats it then pumps the "clean" water in the river. which goes down stream to the ocean. I'm sure a certian percent of that water is leaching into the underground aquafirs where we get our water from SO... i guess in a round about sorta way we are drinking *@!% Water!!

[duckandcover]

Here is a recent Pop-Sci article all about testing the sewage of a city for overall drug usage.  I work in the civil industry and can assure you that they could never get it back to a particular home.  Still some interesting results though.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-02/your-sewer-drugs

[Chi_Chi_Lover]

I believe that all the water goes to a treatment plant and then it is purified. Have you ever smelled your water and it has a little bit of a clorine smell? It is purified at the treatment plants and you are safe. I won't drink it unless it comes from my fridge which has a britta filter on it.
Just stick with your bottle water. I give my dogs bottle water. Except our lab she drinks out of the pool and toilet. LOL  

Our recycle bind is always over run with water bottles each week.