One thing we’ve all taken for granted is to be able to go to the tap and fill a glass of clean, safe water to drink. Apparently we should think twice about that now. A recent government report found that at least 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals have been released into waterways by U.S. manufacturers. Waterways that are the sources for drinking water have been found to contain everything from nitroglycerin to lithium.
What’s troubling about this data is that the apparent dumping is legal. Federal officials don’t know to what extent drug manufacturers are releasing pharmaceuticals because they don’t track them as drugs. The EPA monitors them only as industrial chemicals dumped into bodies of water under pollution laws. The FDA classifies them as pharmaceuticals but doesn’t monitor waste releases. Drug makers blame other types of manufacturers.
Lithium may be a good thing for bipolar disorder and nitroglycerin great for heart patients, but those of us without those conditions probably don’t want them in our drinking water. As the Obama administration tries to overhaul and modernize our regulatory agencies like the FDA and EPA, overlapping jurisdictions that result in no oversight, such as in this case, needs to be addressed as well.
Richard J. Arsenault, 2011
