Feeling high on a little more than sustainability? According to a recent review of 'treated' water in many cities throughout the country, prescription drugs are making it through the filtration process and into the public drinking supply.
"Officials in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds."
You can read more about here:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/03/10/pharma.water1.ap/index.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
On the flip side, buying bottled water isn't really all that sustainable. Check out this blog post for a lovely illustration on the evils of bottled water:
http://blogs.venturacountystar.com/vcs/greenberg/archives/2008/02/bottled_water.html
I guess its a damned if you do damned if you don't kind of situation.
okay, so that link didn't fit on the screen so I'll describe what it says:
"Even though we have some of the best and safest tap water in the world Americans still buy upwards of 28 billion bottles of water a year. Manufacturing this uses as much as 45 to 50 million barrels of oil and produces up to 3 tons of CO2 a year. 80 percent of the used bottles wind up in land-fills, not in recycling. Plastic bottles heated in the sun can leach chemicals into the water. And on a perounce basis, bottled water costs twice or more what gasoline does, and can be up to 1,000 times the cost of tap water. But isn't it worth it since they no doubt bottle it form some pristine, mysterious source?"
Post a Comment