Pharmaceuticals Found in European Drinking Water

Environment News Service

There is practically no data for gauging the potential toxicity of these pharmaceuticals to humans, wildlife or aquatic ecosystems, scientists say.

New studies show the drugs are coming from human wastes. Half of an prescribed pharmaceutical may be excreted from the patient's body in its original form, on in another biologically active form. In some cases up to 90 percent of the drugs originally ingested find their way into water supplies.

This year, the Swiss Federal Research Station documented the presence of clofibric acid, a widely-used cholesterol-lowering drug, throughout Switzerland's waters -- from rural mountain lakes to rivers flowing through densely populated areas. The wide-spread presence of clofibric acid, which is not even manufactured in Switzerland, is evidence that it did not come from some industrial accident or spill, but from human wastes, says Swiss scientist Hans-Rudolf Buser.

Scientists with the Technical University of Berlin have conducted research showing high levels of clofibric acid in Berlin groundwater and in all tap water sampled in the study. A Berlin team of scientists has also found in Berlin's drinking water additional drugs that regulate blood-lipid levels and analgesics (including ibuprofen and diclofenac).

In other research in Germany, chemist Thomas Ternes, with the municipal water research laboratory in Wiesbaden, Germany, launched a water monitoring project and detected 30 of 60 common pharmaceuticals in sewage, treated water, and in nearly all streams and rivers in Germany. These include: lipid-lowering drugs, antibiotics, analgesics, antiseptics, beta-blocker heart drugs, and drugs to control epilepsy.

The concentrations of antibiotics being found in German wastewater suggest that, "these antibiotics may be present at levels of consequence to bacteria -- levels that could not only alter the ecology of the environment but also give rise to antibiotic resistance," says Stuart Levy, who directs the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University in Boston.

The same drugs could be found in U.S. waters if they were monitored for pharmaceuticals, the article suggests. Responsibility for directly monitoring U.S. waters for drugs falls neither under the jurisdiction of the U.S. EPA nor under the FDA.

"The issue of drugs in water is certainly an area where we could use a lot more science," says James Pendergast, acting director of the EPA division that regulates what comes out of sewage-treatment plants. "To date, information on hazards (to wildlife or to people) at the nanogram level just hasn't been developed."

Pendergast says water-quality engineers recognize that one of the highest-volume contaminants emerging in sewage-plant effluent, especially early in the morning, is caffeine, a substance excreted by all those people who regularly rely on their morning coffee to jump-start the day.

The article was published in the March 21 issue of Science News.