Few regulations for drugs in drinking water

Also, the list hasn’t been updated for years and ignores scores of troublesome newer drugs, including toxic chemotherapy agents.

“It has not been practical or economical to keep pace with the large number of pharmaceuticals developed, approved ... and marketed each year,” explains EPA spokeswoman Roxanne Smith.

And what of the drug waste generated by millions of U.S. households? It’s exempt from these rules. The EPA again says it would be impractical to act.

Striking a balance
In fairness, even those pressing for action realize that regulators must strike a hard balance between potential benefits and costs. Several recent studies indicate that even very dilute pharmaceuticals can harm human cells, but scientists are still unsure if there’s a significant health risk from drinking water with trace drugs.

Environmental standards focus on better-understood contaminants from disease-causing germs to manmade dioxins. The government also is pondering a raft of newly identified water contaminants in many products from cosmetics to vitamins — not just in pharmaceuticals.

The government has tried to narrow the focus of much of its drugs-in-water research to powerful hormones that orchestrate reproduction and development and omnipresent antibiotics that strengthen the very germs in the environment that they’re meant to kill in the body.

“This is a complex issue because each and every one of us is a part of this problem. But there’s no doubt we need a new standard of wastewater treatment. If the limits were there, believe me when I say it could be done,” argues environmental toxicologist Greg Moller, at the University of Idaho.

As with global warming, some cities and states have tried to forge ahead, even without strong federal direction. Small pilot programs and one-day pickups of unused drugs have popped up in the Northeast, California, Washington state, Florida, and elsewhere.

Maine is preparing to accept unwanted pharmaceuticals on a grander scale. The federal and state governments have split the $300,000 cost to launch a four-county trial in coming months. Pharmaceutical buyers will take home prepaid mailers to send drug leftovers to a way station, where most will be picked up for transport to incinerators. Organizers intend eventually

Drug pollution overseas
Drug pollution stirs more anxiety in Europe, Canada and Australia, and officials in those places have acted more aggressively to reclaim unused drugs. A French program recaptured about 6,500 tons at drug stores in 2005, managers estimate. Two-thirds of the French say they participate, according to one poll.

That program is run by Jacques Aumonier, an environmental officer for Cephalon, Inc., a Pennsylvania-based biopharmaceuticals firm. He said pharmaceutical levels in water may be modest now, “but with more and more drug use, it can become more important.”

Some researchers and activists want to catch and stop drugs from entering waterways at both types of water treatment plants — those for sewage and for drinking water. Standard techniques allow many to slip through, research shows. It seems possible to remove virtually all detectable pharmaceutical traces with an advanced treatment known as reverse osmosis, and hotter incinerators also could burn more drugs.

But all that is viewed as too expensive and maybe unnecessary, at least until the threat is better understood.

“When there’s no regulation or limit, and no evidence of human health impacts, it’s very hard to justify putting in energy and money to test for it,” said Shane Snyder, research and development project manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority in Las Vegas. Never mind spending much more to remove it.

Some critics want drug companies to design medicines that break down more easily into safer byproducts. “In the long run ... we can at least make some of the compounds greener,” says chemist Klaus Kuemmerer, at the University of Freiburg Medical Center in Germany.

However, that would come “a distant third” after designing drugs for effectiveness and safety, says Cunningham of GlaxoSmithKline.

In coming years, public pressure is likely to grow, as more pharmaceuticals find their way into less water. Drug use is expanding in many countries, and more communities will need to recycle treated wastewater for drinking to cope with increased demand, drought, and global warming.

At the same time, today’s chemical tests that reveal pollutants in parts per trillion will no doubt be able to detect even finer levels in the future. The added knowledge may not equal bliss, though.

“There isn’t such a thing as 100 percent pure water,” said EPA scientist Christian Daughton, one of the first to sound warnings over pharmaceutical pollution. “Yet people have a tough time with the idea that water contains all kinds of chemicals.”

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