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Living Green: Finish – don’t flush – your antibiotic tablets

New technology is making it easier to detect trace amounts of pharmaceutical chemicals and more people are taking drugs.
drugs

Back in summer 2015, during our record drought, I wrote a series of articles on water — conservation of quantity, quality and spirit.

I’ve also written about plastics pollution worldwide, which has become headline news.

Less visible, however, are the potential environmental health impacts from the pharmaceutical contamination of water, first documented over a decade ago.

As reported by CBC’s Kelly Crowe in 2014, two things are happening: New technology is making it easier to detect trace amounts of pharmaceutical chemicals and more people are taking drugs.

Trent University’s Chris Metcalfe, an environmental toxicologist, warns: “With aging boomers, the amounts of pharmaceuticals… being consumed are going up between 10 and 15% a year… in North America.”

With the current opioid crisis, in addition to the human health and social impacts, I’m now left wondering just how far-reaching the adverse environmental health effects could be.

In 2011, CBS News reported the following from the U.S. Government Accountability Office:

• National and regional studies by the U.S. Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency and others have detected pharmaceuticals in source water, treated drinking water and treated wastewater.

• For every U.S. drinking water treatment plant, there are six potential sources of pharma contamination: drug factories, municipal sewers, hospitals, wastewater treatment plants, farm runoff and rural septic systems.

• Of the 12 pharma chemicals detected most in contaminated drinking water, eight are estrogenic hormones (half of which are used in both human and veterinary pharmaceuticals), followed by progesterone (another hormone) and the commonly prescribed antibiotic erythromycin.

• In addition to contraceptives, prescription drugs and antibiotics, nicotine excreted from smokers and antibiotics from farm animals also make their way into the drinking water supply.

A 2016 study by scientists from NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Centre and the University of Washington detected 81 of the 150 listed contaminants of emerging concern (CEC) in wastewater flowing into Puget Sound estuaries.

The study also examined juvenile chinook salmon and Pacific staghorn sculpin and found 42 CEC in their tissue. Some of the compounds, such as fluoxetine (Prozac), the diabetes drug metformin and the antibacterial compound triclosan were present in fish tissues at levels that may be high enough to adversely affect their growth, reproduction or behaviour.

The First Nations Food, Nutrition and Environment Study, Ontario Regional Report (2014) concluded that certain pharmaceuticals are known to bioaccumulate and can cause fertility problems in fish. Drugs detected in the Great Lakes at levels to be “of environmental concern” include: acetaminophen, codeine, antibiotics, hormones, steroids, and anti-epileptic compounds,” along with dozens of other chemicals.

Most treatment plants in Canada do not filter out pharmaceuticals and, to date, there are no national drinking water standards for pharmaceuticals.

But in January 2017, CBC News reported encouraging findings from University of Waterloo’s Mark Servos: From 2007 to ’12, Servos and his graduate students observed the feminization of male rainbow darter fish downstream of the Kitchener wastewater outfall.

The fish had eggs in their male tissues or their testes. Studied because they are extremely sensitive to estrogens and other hormone disrupters (chemicals that interact with the body and change how hormones signal and interact with different organs), these male rainbow darters failed to develop the same colour, behave the same way and reproduce the way they should.

In 2012, the region changed the aeration tank in its water treatment plant. Researchers found that helpful microorganisms used to remove toxic ammonia from the treated water effluent also reduced the levels of those endocrine disrupters.

Over the year following the upgrades, Servos’ team noticed the number of inter-sex males dropped from 100% to 29%. “Within a few years, we’ve actually seen the impact we’re concerned about — primarily eggs showing up in male fish — almost… disappear. It’s gone back to normal, or upstream levels,” he said.

Melissa Chaun of Port Moody is an ecologist with a passion for all things sustainable. She is events co-ordinator with the Rivershed Society of BC and volunteers on various city committees. Her column runs monthly. 

 

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Do your part to keep water clean

Kitchener, Ont. changed the way it handled wastewater and its efforts helped reverse the effects of pharmaceutical substances on fish downstream.

What can you or I do to keep such substances out of our water? Here are some tips:

• Before your doctor or veterinarian prescribes a pharmaceutical, find out how necessary they are. Visit dobugsneeddrugs.org and antibioticwise.ca for information. Learn if there are natural effective remedies that can address the problem (e.g., gargling with diluted apple cider vinegar can be effective for sore throats).

• If an antibiotic prescription is necessary, ensure you complete the course of treatment — don’t stop just because you’re starting to feel better. Not following through can cause any surviving bacteria to build resistance against the medication.

• If a non-antibiotic prescription, such as a painkiller (analgesic) is necessary, ask your doctor/veterinarian to write a small initial prescription to reduce the amount of waste if the course of treatment is shorter than predicted and/or a different pharmaceutical course is later followed.

• Return unused medicines to your pharmacist for safe disposal — never flush medications down the sink or toilet.

• Maintain a healthy gut microbiome by minimizing your use of antibiotics and eating whole foods. Highly diverse microbiomes have been associated with healthy individuals. Microbes take food your intestines have not absorbed and convert it into something useful like dietary fibre that, when further broken down, nourishes and energizes your intestinal lining. Other byproducts appear to reduce Type 2 diabetes risks and inflammation, improve one’s moods, stabilize the immune system and even neutralize carcinogens from red meat.