Pharmaceutical drug contamination of waterways threatens life on our planet

Pharmaceutical drug contamination of waterways threatens life on our planet

The President’s Cancer Panel (PCP) recently released its yearly report to the President outlining the status of cancer in America. This year’s report focuses primarily on environmental factors that contribute to cancer risk. According to the report, pharmaceutical drugs are a serious environmental pollutant, particularly in the way they continue to contaminate waterways across the country (and the world).

Many reports have recently appeared about pharmaceutical contamination of water supplies, rivers, lakes and other waterways, but spokespersons from the drug and chemical industries have denied that this pollution poses any risk whatsoever to the environment. But this report, issued directly from PCP, provides a stunning indictment of the dangers associated with pharmaceutical pollution.

The executive summary of the PCP report includes the following statements:

“[P]harmaceuticals have become a considerable source of environmental contamination. Drugs of all types enter the water supply when they are excreted or improperly disposed of; the health impact of long-term exposure to varying mixtures of these compounds is unknown.”

It’s important to note that PCP is required by law to assess the National Cancer Program and offer a truthful evaluation of the various things it finds to be responsible for causing cancer. The panel is a division of the National Cancer Institute itself, so its findings hold fairly considerable weight in the scientific world (or they should, if the reaction wasn’t so politicized).

The report itself is quite extensive, evaluating everything from the environmental and health impacts of drug and pesticide pollution to cell phone radiation and nuclear testing residue. But the section on pharmaceutical drugs is especially interesting when considering the fact that numerous reports have shown that drugs and drug residue that ends up in water supplies typically isn’t filtered out by municipal treatment plants.

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I suggest reading the rest of the article, it brings up a lot of things that we all talk about but the government isn't willing to admit to us or even publish.

At the end of the part I quoted, they mention the EPA and FDA basically not doing their job to speak generally. Not only do we allow big pharma to use and abuse the masses with unneeded medications and poison but we are allowing them (or more so the government we are supposed to 'trust') to ruin our water as well.

I know this isn't anything new, but looking at the figures they talk about in the article you can see that things are a lot worse than we are led to believe (unless you do your own research, but even then you may never find a complete analysis of any certain body of water).

I hope, but doubt, that the quality of our water will be improved. But as you can see reading the article, the actual amount of toxins in our water may not even get reported correctly unless it comes directly from the source and politics don't skew the numbers (and by skew I mean falsify).

[edit on 30/7/2010 by highlyoriginal]

It's all okay. The EPA and the FDA are here to protect us. They wouldnt let anything bad happen to us.

And if it is bad then the government will just take some money from the pharmas and everything will be daisys and sunflowers.

All hail government.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


Yeah I know they will, I just posted a thread about a drug that was out for 3 years and it caused 500+ heart failures/heart attacks a month - it took 3 YEARS for it to get called off the market.

After they did, and all the people were paid off for what had happened them, the pharma company still only lost a very small fraction of their earnings. How sad