One study points out the increase of pharmaceuticals in the water supply, most of which can be excreted from the body (usually in urine), flushed into toilets, and can pass through sewerage treatment plants into surface waters, rivers, etc.
In Philadelphia, the water department has found traces of 56 pharmaceuticals or their byproducts - like the active ingredients in drugs to treat depression, anxiety, high cholesterol, fever and pain - in the drinking water, and that 63 pharmaceuticals or byproducts had been found in the city's source watersheds. However the Water Department spokeswoman Laura Copeland said, "It would be irresponsible to communicate to the public about this issue, as doing so would only generate questions that scientific research has not yet answered. We don't want to create the perception where people would be alarmed."
The City of Milwaukee does monitor pharmaceuticals and other personal care products (PPCPs) and provides this infomration on their website to citizens, but does include a disclaimer: "The fact that a substance is detectable does not mean the substance is harmful to humans. To date, research throughout the world has not demonstrated an impact on human health from pharmaceuticals at the low levels found in some drinking water supplies."
Experts encourage people not to flush unused medicines down the toilet, but to dispose of them as solid waste. This, of course leads to the question, does this leach into groundwater? The answer: It depends on the type of solid waste system.
Beyond pharmaceuticals, there are a number of other waste by-products that end up in the water supply. Since 1992, MTBE has been used at higher concentrations in some gasoline to fulfill the oxygenate requirements set by Congress in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. (A few cities, such as Denver, used oxygenates (MTBE) at higher concentrations during the wintertime in the late 1980's.)
A risk assessment by the European Union (EU) in 2001 of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) has concluded that it does not pose a danger to human health, but that tighter controls on the handling and storage of the chemical are required. However, MTBE producers face a crisis of public confidence in the US due to leakages from storage facilities and its known carcinogenic qualities.
While the water quality in the US continues to be higher than the world at large, with the globalization of economies, the world's fresh water supply which is 2.5% of all the world's water, is endangered.
In fact, demand is already outstripping supply as these latest statistics from Blue Gold attest:
* Groundwater extractions exceed the recharge rate in the Arabian peninsula by nearly three times
* Seawater intrusion and agricultural runoff have contaminated 13 percent of Israel's coastal aquifers
* Non-recharging aquifers in Africa are being depleted at a rate of 10 billion cubic meters per year
* India is experiencing falling water tables throughout the entire country
* Eight regions in China are subject to aquifer overdraft and Beijing's water table has fallen 37 meters during the past four decades
* Mexico city pumps out its aquifers at a rate 50 to 80 percent greater than they recharge, prompting experts to predict that the city will run dry in the next decade
* Extractions from the 800-mile wide High Plains Ogallala aquifer in the U.S. exceed the recharge rate by eight times, and finally
* "21 percent of irrigation is achieved by pumping ground water at rates that exceed the recharge rate."
As explained in Blue Gold:
The dominant worldview adhered to by the corporate elite and their allies in government places greater value on economic growth and shareholder gains than on human rights and ecological sustainability. As a consequence of this pervasive attitude, the natural world, with all of its complex associations and diverse ecosystems, is unraveling under the ravenous, "resource-eating" frenzy of globalization. The abuse of water, especially by the most prosperous segments of society, reflects the cavalier and irreverent attitude that humanity has towards water. Water, that universal ingredient for life itself, has become the latest victim to suffer from the unbalanced, unsustainable economic model of infinite growth.
What this seems to say is that we need to be more vigilant about our water supply and to push for higher water quality and water policy standards.
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