Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Drugs dumped into water

Yet another story about pills and medicines that get dumped into our rivers, lakes, and oceans. The medicines go right through sewage treatment after being flushed.

Today's article focuses on institutional drug disposal, including hospitals and long-term care facilities, from sources such as unused pills prescribed to patients that die, expired drugs, and over-prescribed drugs.

Drugs in our waters are bad for fish, and we need a solution. Check out Smart Disposal for an interesting campaign to solve the problem.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Drug pollution is such a nasty... fullreply.com/1e

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8 said...

I'm in this industry, and people ask me all the time what to do.

My response is that, truthfully, we don't have a good answer yet.

We need to tax manufacturers and distributors to fund collection and safe disposal.

But don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

In the meantime, I think mixing with coffee grounds in the regular trash is the best answer at the moment. Not perfect, but better than the water supply.

nollyposh said...

hey mark- having gone through chemo (in 2005) for b.cancer, i have always wondered about the chemo chemicals that you pee out after sessions
doc's say 'flush the loo twice' because it's so toxic (!!!)
i wonder with the rising rates of cancer (breast cancer in particular) just what effect these highly toxic chemicals are having on the ocean and thus back into the food chain??
nobody ever seems to talk about this- vicki