Study: Range of pharmaceuticals in fish across US

[kpete]

Source: Salon

Study: Range of pharmaceuticals in fish across US
By MARTHA MENDOZA Associated Press Writer

Mar 25th, 2009 | Fish caught near wastewater treatment plants serving five major U.S. cities had residues of pharmaceuticals in them, including medicines used to treat high cholesterol, allergies, high blood pressure, bipolar disorder and depression, researchers reported Wednesday.

Findings from this first nationwide study of human drugs in fish tissue have prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to significantly expand similar ongoing research to more than 150 different locations.

"The average person hopefully will see this type of a study and see the importance of us thinking about water that we use every day, where does it come from, where does it go to? We need to understand this is a limited resource and we need to learn a lot more about our impacts on it," said study co-author Bryan Brooks, a Baylor University researcher and professor who has published more than a dozen studies related to pharmaceuticals in the environment.

A person would have to eat hundreds of thousands of fish dinners to get even a single therapeutic dose, Brooks said. But researchers including Brooks have found that even extremely diluted concentrations of pharmaceutical residues can harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species because of their constant exposure to contaminated water.

Read more: http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/scitech/2009/03/25/D9754E301_pharmawater_fish/index.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Who knew? Getting Lipitor in my fish oil . . . .

[ForrestGump]

2. Double duty, cardiovascular-wise.

And antidepressants in the sashimi.

Maybe oysters, bolstered by Viagra, will finally work as advertised. Though hepatitis still kinda diminishes the mood...

[kestrel91316]

3. I'm not worried about the contaminated fish harming me. I'm worried

about the contaminants harming the fish. And frogs. And creatures that eat them.

To dispose of unused medications: pour liquid meds into a plastic bag half full of clay cat litter, zip the bag up and throw in the trash. For pills, dissolve in water and then dispose as for liquids. Of course, while dissolving, handle carefully and keep out of the reach of children and pets.

DON'T FLUSH MEDS.

[Buzz Clik]

5. It's not the flushing of unused medications that is the problem here.

Our bodies are very inefficient when it comes to using the vast array of chemicals we put in ourselves on a daily bassis. The major trail for these medications is bottle to mouth to excretion to sewer and out into water supply.

[kestrel91316]

9. That's not something we can control. We CAN control whether or not

we flush meds unnecessarily into the water.

[mikelgb]

7. and where does the ziplock full of toxic cat litter end up?

unless we shoot it into space everything on Earth stays on Earth. That plastic bag is eventually going to get somewhere sure maybe not in our lifetimes but that is just kicking the can down the road.

[kestrel91316]

10. It goes into a landfill where the drugs will break down over time.

Which is a FAR sight better than putting it into water when it gets taken up by life forms.

Get back to me when you know just a TINY bit about chemistry and biology.

[caseymoz]

12. That does depend on how stabile they are.

And whether there's a general program by cities and counties to try to recycle what's in the landfill. It seems to me that they have a lot of opportunity to break down elsewhere, and conceivably, they could break down or react into something worse, not better.

But . . . we can try it.

[kestrel91316]

14. Drugs DO break down. That's why they have those damned expiration dates.

If we can delay the drugs entering water, it's a step in the right direction. Dumping them directly into water is completely boneheaded. And yes, that's what I used to do with expired drugs here, before word got out about the cat litter/landfill thing. We ALL used to flush them. We thought that was the most appropriate thing.

[caseymoz]

16. You're right that dumping them is completely bone-headed.

But it does depend on what the drugs break down into.

I'm sorry to be such trouble, but I don't find any great solution to this.

[caseymoz]

11. They will still eventually seep into the water supply, but it does slow them down.

. . . and while it's seeping and running off in rainwater, it will still contaminate the soil. There isn't a good solution to this. It's probably a little bit better than flushing them, and but probably not enough for the extra trouble.

Besides, by far the main problem isn't flushed medications, it's medications in human urine that are causing the problems. Much of those medications, believe it or not, are either excreted unchanged, either that, or their metabolant by are what's excreted.

[kestrel91316]

13. Most these medications WILL chemically break down before they ever

seep out of a landfill and into groundwater. They are not like DDT and other persistent chemicals. They DO degrade (thanks to our microbial friends).

[caseymoz]

17. Now much depends on if any microbial friends volunteer.

I'm sorry to be such a pain in the ass pessimist about this. I have to often seen solutions to environmental problems that are inadequate or actually more harmful (ethanol, but let's not go there). Essentially, I believe you.

[Buzz Clik]

4. It's amazing how oblivious we all are. We are a nation of pill freaks,...

... and we think nothing about what happens to these chemicals after we put them in our bodies.

[tabbycat31]

8. I agree

I don't take any perscription drugs, and don't plan on taking any unless something happens to me.

[caseymoz]

15. Oblivious? I've known about this for some time.

I'm bipolar. I've too often seen the results of going off medications, and going off of them would threaten my life.

What government should limit or study are those scent chemicals that companies put into things. None of these are regulated or checked in any way, and they could be extremely harmful as far as we know. They could be highly toxic or have other unknown effects. They should also limit anti-bacterial soap in consumer products. Those are two worries I have, but I'm not environmentalist enough to endanger my mind or self-preservation.

Plus, the government should evaluate the use of chemicals with hormonal effects. Those are cutting down male populations and causing changes in male behavior and sterility across all species, and the proportion of male/female births in the human species has been significantly effected in some countries.

This subject broke into the news with a big announcement by scientists as a major world-wide problem, and then died quickly without trace. I guess it was far too alarmist for general public to face it.

[Lasher]

6. Well at least the fish won't get depressed or have high blood pressure.

If I get high cholesterol I'm just gonna go swim in the river all day.

[caseymoz]

18. lol. Not a therapeutic dose.

And remember, the fish are essentially inhaling it.

[Lasher]

20. You mean like cocaine?

If I catch a fish that starts sniffing I'm throwing it back.

[caseymoz]

21. No, more like crack, but in much smaller doses.

Really. It's like being in a room with a bunch of smokers, except it's all kinds of drugs in the smoke.

:rofl:

[Lasher]

23. Oh, so it's more like when they find a huge stash of MJ

When they pile it up and burn it they all stand downwind. That's what the Army did in Vietnam in the '70s anyway.

:hippie:

[denem]

19. So fish get no-copay pharmaceuticals huh? Medicare Pt F.

[Grinchie]

22. This has been known for several years now.

Historically, the peasants in Russia would collect the urine of nobles that were taking the drug from the Fly Agarica mushroom because the drug passes through the body unchanged, and they would recycle the drug for their own use.

Many feedlots contain huge Manure Lagoons that contain the runoff and effluent for thousands of Medicated cattle, Swine and Chicken. The lagoons are full of the unchanged medication as well, and are considered toxic waste.

They give "Medicated" feed to Chickens, regardless of whether the Chickens live in CAFO's or your backyard. A salesperson once tried to convince me to buy medicated feed, simply due to the fact that it was going to rain for a week. This was in Hawai'i, and it rains almost everyday where we live. A less well informed person would have taken there advice and paid the extra money, unwittingly contributing to the chance of creating an environment where normally benign microbes are stress to the point where they transform into a hardier, more virulent type. This porcess (Pleionmorphism) has been denied since the time of Pasteur, but recent studies have proven that organisms such as salmonella will change into different forms depending on nutrient and other environment factors.

Remember the days when you would buy steer manure for your garden? These days you risk dumping a load of pharmaceuticals in your back yard, along with the bugs that have adapted to the now toxic environment by turing into E. Coli H1E57 ?? (The toxic, hardy version that destroys your liver)

So why would the powers that be want to suppress the idea that simple organisms can change and adapt depending on stress induced from the environment? The answer is simple, because it leads to the deduction that drugs can change things into possibly deadly things. This would mean prolonged study on a whole range of benign organisms to see how they react to stress.

When Penicilin helps someone recover from an infection, it does this by destroying an overwhelming number of organisms that the body is having difficulty dealing with. These dead organisms are floating around your bloodstream, in your tissues, and are generally targeted for removal. It is this process that allows the body to "Catch" up and clean out the dead organisms, and in the process of renewal, remove the remaining organisms.