Health, Taken Seriously

A scary report out today says that traces of various pharmaceutical drugs, including antibiotics, have been found in the drinking water of 24 major metropolitan areas.  The report says that the chlorine added to our water could make these drugs more toxic, that the drugs could be more dangerous than other pollutants because they are designed to act on the human body, and that the only way to remove them is through expensive reverse osmosis filtration.  A few other interesting tidbits from the article:

• Recent laboratory research has found that small amounts of medication have affected human embryonic kidney cells, human blood cells and human breast cancer cells. The cancer cells proliferated too quickly; the kidney cells grew too slowly; and the blood cells showed biological activity associated with inflammation.
• Pharmaceuticals in waterways are damaging wildlife across the nation and around the globe, research shows. Notably, male fish are being feminized, creating egg yolk proteins, a process usually restricted to females.
• Over the past five years, the number of U.S. prescriptions rose 12 percent to a record 3.7 billion.
• Contamination is not confined to the United States. More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world.