If you think your local water treatment plant has the ability to make absolutely sure that the water supply coming into your home is 100% safe, you might be surprised to know that they don't have all the capabilities that you think they do.
Do you throw your old medications down your toilet? Reply in the comments.
The Wrong Way To Dispose Of Old Medications
Besides the overuse of pesticides that pollute the ground, our air, and our food crops, probably one of the worse contributors to poisoning our water supply is when people dump prescription medications down their household drains - especially their toilets.
Most people dump because they don't need or want the drugs anymore. Others do it because they think it's the safest way to get rid of them.
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| Drug handouts explain how to dispose of medications |
The Rules Have Changed
For years, drug companies stopped offering a return policy for discarded drugs. So they told hospitals, pharmacies, and other medical facilities that it was acceptable to dump drugs down the drain. That's how the public came to do the same thing. If it was good enough for medical facilities, then it must be OK for regular people to do.
It was, but back then, it was a common belief these pills and capsules completely dissolved and disappeared into the system. It was also believed that water treatment plants would extract them when they treated the water. As long as the tap water came out very clear and odor-free, dumping medications down the drain seemed harmless.
That's partly true. Most of the drugs do dissolve, but they don't disappear. Trace amounts remain behind. If you multiply just two drugs by the number of people living in one small city, the trace amounts are now astronomical.
Infected Sea Life And Food Supply
Federal, state and local water authorities perform various quality tests throughout each day. After years of dumping, they found that these medications - whether or not they had dissolved - still remained in the wastewater. Some is washed out into the ocean, where fish and other sea creatures absorb them. Scientists attribute the dumping of medications to the different kinds of anomalies in fish, in our environment, and in our food supply.
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| Click on picture to enlarge; check out the findings by scientists |
Although the EPA has guidelines to say that certain percentages are "acceptable" in our water supply, laboratories found excessive amounts of antidepressants, steroids, contraceptives, and pain medications were present. When they tested animals and sea life that were exposed, they have found high amounts of hormones that created mutant fish (with both male and female sex organs), neurological disorders as well as physical changes.
Scientists say if the public continues to dump medications down their drains which leads into the water supply, the drug residue in the filtration systems at water treatment facilities will continue to build up.
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| Metformin - from an article on US NEWS |
What To Do With Old Medications
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Many cities place disposal boxes in pharmacies
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Mix the pills up with something like bleach and garden dirt, in "used" cat litter or "used" coffee grounds (without crushing the tablets themselves). Then place the mixture into a sealed plastic bag. For added security, you can carefully pour some household bleach or ammonia in the bag so the smell chases snoops away.
This way if anyone does find your old pills in the trash, they won't want to use them - especially if they are mixed up in "used" cat litter and ammonia!
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| Dispose in used cat litter, add bleach or ammonia to repel. |
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