I read that, too. Kind of alarming. I do drink Poland Spring water from my water crock, and I have a well. I wonder if all that stuff is getting into the well water, since most people with wells have septic systems too.

I seen that artical..this is disturbing and disgusting!!!!!!

I heard about it too. I only drink bottled water anyway since we have well water and I can't stand the taste of it. Even though I do cook with tap water, pasta, rice, etc.

Using bottled water won't help, most bottled water is just tap water anyway.

-Robin

I saw that..... and I also have seen the articles stating that many bottled waters are just tap water.
I wonder what my Britta pitcher does for pharmaceuticals?
Linda C

That happens when people dispose of unwanted medications in the toilet. I saw a story on this on Oprah several months ago. I filter my water for drinking.

The bottled water is not necessarily any safer than the tap water, and it's a whole lot worse for the environment. Plus, the plastic the water is bottled in, (as well as soft drinks) is under scrutiny for being a health hazard. I have a water filter on my fridge and drink that water, but at work I just drink water from the fountain.

Sally

Here is a link that might be useful: NRDC bottled water FAQ's

I've been aware of "drugs" in the drinking water since 1993 and understood distillation was the only method that removes them. We've used a water distiller for more than 20 years for our drinking water because of all the farm chemicals in the area and a plume of chemicals left by the military in the 1940's that is located close to the city wells.

I've also know of people who's physician suggested they drink only distilled water because they were having drug interactions and the interaction may have been coming from the drinking water from the tap.

Drugs are excreted by humans and animals (cattle are commonly treated with a variety of drugs and the drugs are in the run-off from cattle lots, etc.), and the practice of flushing unused drugs down a toilet is common in nursing homes, so one can only guess how much gets into the city water system. Our city water treatment systems are designed to treat bacteria, and don't have a process to remove "drugs". In one report in my file, "It is estimated that approximately 90% of prescription drugs we take are passed through the body via the urine and or feces and go to waste treatment plants...".

When our daughter and family moved to Germany in 1996, one of the first things we sent them was a water distiller. The military encouraged them to use a system for water purification/filtration and she was accustomed to the distiller growing up at home. As it turned out, it was in Berlin, Germany where they first discovered "drugs" in the drinking water - I think it was back in the 1980's. In another report in my file: According to Stuart Levy, director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University in Boston, the answer may be in the water. He says "Our concentration (the U.S.) of antibiotics is 1,000 times higher than in the German water. High enough to affect the growth of E. coli bacteria.....

This is VERY old news from my perspective.

-Grainlady

Careful to those who have home filtration - doesn't work much:

'Even users of bottled water and home filtration systems don't necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals, according to the industry's main trade group. The same goes for the makers of home filtration systems.'

We distill our own water but it doesn't mention that in the article.

Sigh... It's a wonder I'm still alive...

Drugs in our water... PCB's... MSG... Trans fats... Mercury... Artificial sweeteners... High fructose corn syrup... Other food additives... Toxic contaminants in it the plastic used for our foods and water bottles... Formaldehyde... Mad cow disease... Use of sulfuric acid to process soy products... DDT... E. coli in organic fruits and veggies... E. coli, antibiotics & hormones in our meats... Doctors and clinics reusing syringes... Cell phones that cause brain tumors... Parasites in fish... Medications that cause death... Recalled hip replacement parts, pace makers, stints and artificial hearts... Lead paint on children's toys... Video games that cause seizures... Appliances and bakeware that explodes... How many more have I left out?

And they're trying to say you can die from second hand smoke... Give me a break, there's more carcinogenic substances released from diesel fuel and jet fuel, not to mention the effects of gasoline and coal and Radon...

Yet.... We're living longer... Must be all the preservatives.

Rita

The company I first purchased my food storage grains from was a survivalist-type place. I received 'news' letters from them periodically. This was in the early '80s. They were talking then about pharmaceuticals in the water supply. In their case, it was advertising to get me to buy purifying products from them. After much discussion of all the various risks we take every day DH & I decided that we were more likely to die from getting hit by a bus than drinking our tap water so we've never purchased any type of filtration or distilling system for the house. We do keep a basic filtration for emergencies in our food storage program though & a smaller one lives in our car. Those are for in case we have to use our water storage...it's treated so the filtration is a belt & suspenders type of thing. We've never had to use it.

Heck, in my area, the town even gives out thyroid pills because of the nuclear power plant.

I'm sure pharmaceuticals ARE in our water supply. I venture a guess though our water is no worse & probably better than what it was 100 years ago when sewers dumped directly into rivers, streams, lakes, etc. without any treatment.

Life has risks. I don't want to live in the hills as a survivalist. Heck, I've got enough known health problems without staying awake at night worrying about the pitcher of iced tea I made with tap water.

Bah, Humbug...

That said though...we do have a filtration system on our boat's tap water in the galley but that's because it's a closed system & it sometimes sits in the lines unused for extended periods of time. We hold 250 gallons of water & treat the tank as well as having the galley filtration.

/tricia

I wonder if filtration removes impurities like this. I'm pretty sure the process the water companies use won't. I work in a power plant and we process our water for use in high pressure boilers. It has to be ultra pure. I'll check with the lab tech tomorrow and see what he says.
James

Hey, maybe that cocktail of combined medications is the reason we are living so much longer!!!!!

I agree, bottled water has the same impurities, it's just pumped out and bottled and sold to us. We're simply buying our own water when we buy bottled water.

The people in California shouldn't worry, they're getting those anti-anxiety drugs in their water. (grin)

Yes, I know it's not really funny, but it IS old news and I'm tired of the "scare" tactics used by our media. Everything has become an emergency. Since when has 3 inches of snow in Michigan become a "winter weather alert" like it has this year? Since when has impure water become a new thing? How many people have stopped grilling meats since the government decided it could cause cancer? Anyone worried about the drugs in the food/water supply needs to stop buying commercial meat and milk, full of growth hormones and antibiotics. Oh, and stop drinking fountain soft drinks, those fountain drink spigots have more germs than the toilet, according to various sources.

Bah. I'm going home, getting a big glass of water from my tap (it's from the same aquafer that Ice Mountain pumps from, and bottles it without further treatment, but I'm not buying it back from them). Then I'm going to have a big ole' hunk of raw beef, maybe a couple of eggs with runny yolks. I'll have a piece of toast from the bread that's been on my counter about a day longer than the government says it should be, and I'm going to put some of LindaC's jam on it, the stuff she cans with paraffin on top, in spite of the USDA. After that, I think I'll take a walk, without any reflective tape anywhere on my clothing.

If I survive, I'll be back with a cup of coffee and artificial sweetener, or maybe a Diet Coke, also with artificial sweetener and full of chemicals and artificial colorings and flavorings. Oh, and I don't wear a mask when I clean the chicken coop either. Geez, I'm a goner...

Annie

ROFL Annie and don't forget your Vitamin C from China!

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm sure I read somewhere a while back that California water is a certain percentage of recycled sewage. That explains the high amounts of drugs etc in it. Certain things can be filtered out, but other microbes and trace elements are too small to be filtered out.

I've been interested in learning more about such things since the argument began in my part of the world about the advisability of using recycled sewage to supplement our falling water supplies. I had a discussion with my doctors about it, actually, and they are strongly against it. Apparently, up to 90% of any drugs we take are not used by our bodies and are eliminated! The rest just goes down the loo and out to feed the fishies - or, back into ourselves through our drinking water if recycling is in place.

As for bottled water, it's the greatest scam since the world began, as well as being an environmental time-bomb. I refuse to buy the stuff on principle.

I guess the only real solution is the boil all our drinking water, and the water we use for cooking.

One consolation is, of course, that we don't hear of anybody getting sick or dying from drinking tap water. Perhaps all those drugs we ingest have helped to kill any bugs we ingest at the same time!

There are home filters which work (ie filter out tiny particles) but you have to pay through the nose for them, and of course also for the replacement filters which need to be replace frequently.

Quite an article huh.

My first thought when I read that was that perhaps people shouldn't be so quick to want a pill to fix everything - and perhaps they wouldn't be if pharmaceutical companies spent less money on advertising and "bribing" doctors - but that's a whole different topic not suitable for the Cooking Forum.

I did hear Dr. Oz (if you can believe him) talk about how eating a high quality diet can result in a greater improvement in cholesterol and HBP than medication though. Of course it was an EXTREMELY healthy diet - one none of us could endure long term I'm sure.

The second thought I had was that this reinforces my belief that it's not worth buying "organic" foods. Alot of marketing hype around that and in my opinion you simply cannot avoid toxins in our environment.

In the version of that article that I read it said reverse osmosis does remove this stuff from your water. But it also mentioned how many gallons of water you waste to produce one gallon of RO water.

Everything comes at a cost - sometimes readily apparent and sometimes not - including massive consumption of prescription drugs.

As long as I don't find a hair in the water, I'm ok!

ROFL @ Carol!!!!

Guess I'll have to just stick to Crown and cheap beer....

I'm with Annie, I'm not to worried about it. I've flushed the toilet with the lid up more than once....

I think sometimes TMI is just plain and simple TMI...I don't know...but I will sleep fine tonight.

David

The problem is we all use medications, lotions and creams; we wash off in the shower or down the toilet and the water processing plants can't take all the chemicals out of the water. They say it's about a half a pill..which won't affect us; BUT the fish in the waters are being affected...
bottled water is not any better because most of it is bottled from tab water.............so what to do???

Linda P

Filtering water removes chlorine pretty much. The cleanest water is distilling. This news is not new, health nuts have been warning all who will listen to avoid tap water as not all is known of what's in it. We get a report of what's in our city water and there already is a list of long worded chemicals, usually in low parts per million. But, when fish and frogs are being born with extra limbs and male and female organs, etc. if I were of child bearing age, I would think twice about what's in my water. But, there are certainly a lot of things we cannot avoid and better not to live in fear, just do the best you can. How many people die or are maimed in auto accidents per year and yet no one really worries about that.

I'm not sure just how much the filter on my refrigerator takes out of the water... I do know it takes out the chlorine ( the water tasted flat to me at first... lol ) and it does takes out some of the minerals too... I know this because my glass pans no longer get that hazy coating when I boil water...

Daisy, you're right... Some place in California they're re-using their sewer water... Instead of just taking out the solid wastes and returning it to the lakes they're processing it again and sending it directly to the homes... Sounds yucky but eventually everyone's potty water ends up in coming out of their faucet... lol

Rita

I started thinking about when i was nursing and I was told i could not take so many medications because it would be in my milk. Well I might have been taking those medications by accident, although not at levels that would have made for a high concentration in my milk. However I bet this is a much bigger problem for formula fed babies as the drugs would not go through the mommy filtration system. An adult can handle it, but an infant?

-Robin

They are measuring drug residues in parts per trillion. You would have to drink an enormous amount of water (swimming pools and swimming pools) to get a significant amount of drug.

The equivalent on one aspirin size tablet in ten olympic size swimming pools was the way one TV commentator described it.

So far, this is the only wastewater plant (brand new) that will be treating water that will added back to groundwater: Advanced Water Purification Facility. Once percolated back into the groundwater, the water will be treated as usual for the drinking water supply. They say it will be about 10% of the supply for that area of Orange County.

This is why we have an RO (reverse osmosis) system. I've always believed that keeping your drinking water purified is the first place to start protecting your health. Even my dog notices the difference as she prefers the RO water!

I'm equally disturbed about the story of unclean water that our soldiers have been using for bathing in Iraq. Did anyone hear about that?