by Dr. Joseph Mercola
Bacteria May Be Remaking Drugs in Sewage
The U.S. government advises throwing most unused or expired medications into the trash rather than flushing them down the toilet, but water testing across the U.S. shows that no matter how the drugs are disposed, they have a tendency to end up in water.
Your trash is by no means a sealed package, so when it enters a landfill, its contents can and do mingle with other trash and its surrounding environment. Water that drains through landfills, known as leach rate, eventually ends up in rivers. And although not all states source drinking water from rivers, many do.
Further, some people do flush medications down the toilet, even though it’s not suggested. And if you’re taking medications, your body will excrete some when you use the toilet as well.
The fact that pharmaceutical drugs exist in drinking water is no secret. A 2008 Associated Press investigation found the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans contained minute concentrations of a multitude of drugs.
Philadelphia, for instance, tested positive for 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness, and heart problems. The city’s watersheds tested positive for 63 different medications or byproducts.
Drugs in Your Water May Increase After Treatment with Microbes
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee detected 48 pharmaceuticals at a Wisconsin water reclamation facility. This wasn’t all that surprising, especially since wastewater treatment plants have a difficult time removing most pharmaceuticals.
What was concerning, however, was that two of the drugs – carbamazepine, an anti-epileptic drug, and ofloxacin, an antibiotic – increased in concentration after going through the treatment process. Carbamazepine increased by 80 percent while ofloxacin increased by 120 percent; the researchers believe microbes may be to “blame.”
Water treatment plants often use single-celled microbes to decompose organic matter in sewage. When you take a medication, your body breaks it down into different metabolites and excretes them. The microbes, it seems, then put them back together during treatment, resulting in increased concentrations of the drugs. The study’s lead author told Scientific American:
“Microbes seem to be making pharmaceuticals out of what used to be pharmaceuticals.”
In 2008, Canadian researchers also found carbamazepine concentrations increased – by more than double – after water treatment, but this was largely blamed on sampling errors. The current study, however, noted a “clear upward trend over time” that suggests study errors are not to blame.
Fortunately, not every drug is affected this way, but researchers are trying to determine why certain drugs increase while others do not. At present, the fact that carbamazepine, specifically, may increase after treatment is concerning because it’s ubiquitous in wastewater and has shown to cause tissue damage and impaired cells in carp, along with endocrine disruption and reproductive problems in zebrafish.
[Read the full article here]
Microbeads Journey from Your Bathroom Drain Back to Your Dinner Plate
Microbeads are advertised as the perfect way to exfoliate your skin, stave off acne, and even keep your teeth clean. But these tiny beads, which are found in body washes, toothpastes, facial scrubs, and many other personal care products, are nothing more than tiny bits of plastic.
Being so tiny, you might assume such plastics pose little environmental risk, but the opposite is actually true. Unlike a larger piece of plastic, which can hopefully be recycled and, if not, contained in the trash, microbeads are so small they get flushed right down the bathroom drain.
“Once discharged, there are no known methods to effectively remove microplastics or microbeads from the environment,” stated a report from the New York State Attorney General’s office.
They travel right through wastewater treatment plants, too, because the filters used are too small to catch them. The result is our waterways are becoming increasingly clogged with plastic microbeads that have no business being in personal care products in the first place.
Microbeads Absorb Toxins and Are Eaten by Marine Life
Research has only begun to reveal the extent of environmental pollution that microbeads have caused. In a 2012 survey of the Great Lakes, it was found that the area has “some of the highest concentrations of microplastic found in the environment, and microbeads were prevalent.”
Once in the water, microbeads easily absorb endocrine-disrupting and cancer-causing chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Plastics may concentrate such toxins at levels 100,000 to 1 million times higher than the levels found in seawater.
The beads, which resemble fish eggs, are then eaten by many forms of marine life, including plankton, fish, seabirds, and whales. According to the New York State Attorney General report:
“Microplastic concentrations in aquatic environments are increasing rapidly. This accumulation of microplastic is of particular concern because microplastic has the potential to be ingested by a much wider range of organisms than large debris, making it and the chemicals it carries bioavailable throughout the food chain.
“…Wildlife ingestion of plastic also presents the potential for toxicity to both the ingesting species and other species higher in the food chain.
“Harmful chemicals transferred to wildlife from ingested plastic include chemicals added to plastic during manufacturing, and ‘hydrophobic pollutants’ that collect on the surface of the plastic once in either salt or fresh water, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).”
The threat doesn’t stop with marine wildlife, of course. If you eat seafood that has been ingesting microbeads, you’re at risk of a potentially high dose of environmental toxins as well…
Over 100 Personal Care Products Contain Microbeads
Although microbeads have been around since the 1970s, they weren’t widely used by manufacturers until the 1990s. At that time, companies began replacing natural abrasives like ground almonds and sea salt with the plastic microbeads.
It was a clever move profit-wise; because microbeads are smooth and gentler on your skin, they could be used everyday, unlike products with rougher abrasive materials, which are meant to be used once every few days to once a week. This meant more product usage and greater profits.
Many products containing microbeads will advertise them on the label, although they may also be listed as “polyethylene” or “polypropylene” in the ingredients list. It’s estimated that Americans use 0.0309 ounces of microbeads per person per year. This sounds like a small amount, but it adds up to nearly 19 tons of microbeads potentially being discharged in New York State alone.
In New York, the Microbead-Free Waters Act was passed last year to prohibit the sale of cosmetics or personal care products containing plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in size.
Illinois law passed in 2014 also prohibits the manufacture of products containing microbeads by the end of 2017, and bans the sale of such products by the end of 2018. California and Ohio have also proposed bans on the beads, and a federal bill, Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2014, has also been introduced.
In the meantime, several large corporations, including Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Colgate-Palmolive, and L’Oreal have pledged to phase out microbeads from their products.
Avoid Microbeads in Your Toothpaste… and All Your Personal Care Products
There’s good reason to boycott any toothpaste containing microbeads, even aside from the obvious environmental threat. Last year, a Dallas dental hygienist reported finding the microbeads in patients’ teeth.
The bits were found in Crest microbead toothpaste and were getting trapped under patients’ gums. This gives food and bacteria an entrance to your gum line, which could actually cause gum disease. Procter & Gamble, which makes Crest, reported they would stop using the microbeads by 2016 as a result.
While it seems the use of microbeads is on its way out, the Personal Care Products Council (PCPC) is lobbying to have microbeads made from biodegradable plastic, such as polylactic acid (PLA), remain in personal care products.
But PLA does not biodegrade in the environment. If you want to get involved, environmental group 5 Gyres has launched a petition telling PCPC to replace the plastic microbeads with truly natural alternatives. You can sign it now.
[Read the full article here]
Source: www.mercola.com
