There Are Drugs In Our Drinking Water, New Study Says [Health Canada]

Though concentrations are low for any one drug, no studies have been done on the accumulative effect of human exposure to all these drugs at once - enough small things in one dose, is really a big dose.

'On the other hand, we have to be concerned because there's a mixture of these drugs we're being exposed to in drinking water.'

'These include the assessment of risks to human health associated with long-term exposure to low concentrations of pharmaceuticals and the possible combined effects of mixtures of pharmaceuticals'

'Scientists still don't know if that combination of drugs in water poses a human health risk. That research has not been done.'

'The World Health Organization calls it a knowledge gap.'

'Especially when it comes to pharmaceuticals that are synthetic hormones, there is concern, because hormones work at very low concentrations in the human body.'

'Boiling will not solve the problem, Janssen says. And forget bottled water as a way to escape the low levels of drugs found in some public water supplies. "Twenty five percent of bottled water comes from the tap," she says, citing an NRDC report.'

'In Canada, there are no national standards for pharmaceuticals in drinking water.'

--> This means that since there are no standards, there are also no laws, which translates to a complete lack of regulations or enforcable water quality laws by both municipal, provincial, and federal levels of government. If there are no laws, they don't even have to test for these substances. This will take 10-20 years before any regulations are made, just like our recent blog post about Malathion & Glyphosate - doctors warned of the problems in 2005, and only this year (2015) has the World Health Organization concluded studies labeling these chemicals a probable carcinogen.

You either have a filter, or you are a filter.

"Home filtering systems such as reverse osmosis may reduce the medication levels, says Timothy Bartrand, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Drexel University, Philadelphia, who participated in a National Science Foundation workshop to develop a drinking water research agenda."

The Story: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/07/24/cocaine-other-illicit-drugs-found-in-ontario-water-mcgill-study-says.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/drinking-water-contaminated-by-excreted-drugs-a-growing-concern-1.2772289

W.H.O.: http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/emerging/info_sheet_pharmaceuticals/en/

Web M.D.: http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/drugs-in-our-drinking-water?page=3

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/are-there-drugs-in-our-drinking-water-new-study-215824275.html