Tap water, or Rx cocktail?
Soon, there won't be any need for you to go to your doctor for the treatment of any medical condition. You'll be able to just turn on your tap and fill your glass with a cocktail that includes sex hormones, anticonvulsants, anxiety meds, and something for cholesterol for good measure. And that's just a sampling of the possible ingredient list coming straight out of your tap!
A disturbing analysis of our nation's drinking supply shows that 1 in 7 of us are drinking traces of pharmaceuticals in every glass. With prescriptions handed out for every symptom known to mankind, it was only a matter of time before they were trickling down—out of our bodies and into our water supply.
And if you think the government is doing anything to protect you—think again. There are currently no testing requirements nor safety limits for how much pharmaceutical waste can be in your drinking water.
Pharmaceuticals present in the water supply are not "new" news. But for some reason, officials ignored the possibility that it could actually affect us if only because the stories centered on fish and amphibians with odd physical anomalies.
A consultant to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) states that there's "little or no risk from pharmaceuticals in the environment to human health"—with the qualifier "based on what we know" thrown in for good measure.
The VP of PhRMA issued a statement assuring us by saying that their studies "suggest" no health and safety issues for humans.
I "suggest" they give us solid answers and quit beating around the bush with their wordplay.
In his statement, he also said they're committed to doing further research to get a "better understanding" of this topic. So if they don't have an understanding of the issue, how can they comment intelligently at all, or dare to even try to assure us? It would be like me saying to a patient, "I don't have any idea what's wrong with you, but everything is okay!" It's dismissive, and it's an insult to our intelligence.
My favorite statement was from a Big Pharma mouthpiece giving us their assurance that they're working closely with the FDA to ensure our safety.
That's enough to keep me up at night.
This is the same FDA that advises us that it's okay to go ahead and flush a whole bunch of powerful medications right down our toilets and into the water supply. In their guidelines for disposing of prescription drugs, they say to flush rather than toss a range of drugs not limited to but including: painkillers such as oxycodone, morphine and fentanyl, hepatitis B medications, antibiotics, and powerfully dangerous drugs like Sodium Oxybate, used to treat narcolepsy.
They're working to ensure our safety?
You may think you're safe if you reach for bottled water or draw your water from your own well. I'm sorry to report that you're not. Many bottled water manufacturers earned the title of "marketing genius" in bottling up regular old tap water and affixing nice labels to it—then selling it for a healthy profit. While they're filling, sealing and selling—they're not testing for the presence of pharmaceuticals in that tap water.
And if you draw from a well, please realize that the aquifers from which your water is sourced is most likely contaminated with pharmaceuticals as well. When researchers tested water in 24 states, they found traces of unnatural elements in those water samples, which included antibiotics and hormones.
To fix the state of aquifers would require an environmental overhaul the likes of which I can't begin to imagine. But for plain old city water, you would think the reasonable answer would be to filter that water a lot more thoroughly while it's still swirling around at the water treatment plants. Unfortunately, the science hasn't caught up to our reality: most water treatments don't remove all the pharmaceutical byproducts out of the finished product. We just aren't there yet.
I recommend you take matters into your own hands and invest in a good water filter for your home. I prefer the reverse osmosis variety for filtering out all kinds of impurities. There's enough evidence for me to believe that it's effective, and it sure beats relying on the "experts" to take care of you.
Reverse osmosis systems have been used for years to make salt and brackish water potable. A sediment filter traps particles that would otherwise end up in your glass.
