An Associated Press (AP) investigation in 2007 revealed that
most municipal drinking water is contaminated with a wide
variety of prescription drugs, from painkillers to antibiotics
to antipsychotic drugs and even pet medications. The AP report
helped bring to light a problem that scientists had been
worrying about for years—all the medications that we take are
winding up in our waterways. Most of the efforts to counteract
this problem have focused on proper drug disposal, which usually
means throwing old or expired medications out in the land trash
or returning them to a pharmacy as part of a drug take-back
program. But a new study presented at a recent meeting of the
American Chemical Society finds that those efforts may address
only a tiny fraction of the problem. The research, presented by
Ilene S. Ruhoy, MD, PhD, assistant professor and director of the
Institute for Environmental Medicine at Touro University in
Nevada, finds that our daily showers and baths could be
contributing heavily to the problem, a