[Pharmwaste] Drugs tainting water in India
Brian Stenz
brian at returnlogistics.com
Mon Jan 26 05:52:54 EST 2009
Drugs tainting water in India
Researchers report alarming levels of pharmaceuticals
By Margie Mason
The Associated Press
January 26, 2009
PATANCHERU, IndiaWhen researchers analyzed vials of treated
wastewater taken from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories
dump their residues, they were shocked. Enough of a single, powerful
antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every
person in a city of 90,000.
It wasn't just ciprofloxacin being detected. The supposedly cleaned
water was a floating medicine cabinet, a soup of 21 different active
pharmaceutical ingredients used in generics for treatment of
hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression,
gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments.
Half of the drugs were measured at the highest levels of
pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers said.
Those Indian factories produce drugs for much of the world, including
many Americans. The result: Some of India's poor are unwittingly
consuming an array of chemicals that may be harmful, and could lead
to proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria.
"If you take a bath there, then you have all the antibiotics you need
for treatment," said chemist Klaus Kuemmerer, of the University of
Freiburg Medical Center in Germany, an expert on drug resistance in
the environment who did not participate in the research. "If you just
swallow a few gasps of water, you're treated for everything. The
question is, for how long?"
Last year, The Associated Press reported that trace concentrations of
pharmaceuticals had been found in drinking water provided to at least
46 million Americans. The wastewater downstream from the Indian
plants contained 150 times the highest levels detected in the United
States.
Some Indians had long thought drugs were seeping into their drinking
water, and data from Larsson's study presented at a U.S. scientific
conference in November confirmed their suspicions.
Ciprofloxacin, the antibiotic, and the popular antihistamine
cetirizine had the highest levels in the wells of six villages
tested. Both drugs measured far below human doses, but the results
were still alarming.
"We don't have any other source, so we're drinking it," said R.
Durgamma, a mother of four, sitting on the steps of her crude mud
home a few miles downstream from the treatment plant. High drug
concentrations were recently found in her well water. "When the local
leaders come, we offer them water and they won't take it."
Pharmaceutical contamination is an emerging concern worldwide. The
medicines are excreted without being fully metabolized by people who
take them, while hospitals and long-term care facilities annually
flush millions of pounds of unused pills down the drain.
Until Larsson's research, there had been widespread consensus among
researchers that drug makers were not a source.
The consequences of the India studies are worrisome. Researchers are
finding that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when
exposed to trace concentrations of certain pharmaceuticals.
Some waterborne drugs also promote antibiotic-resistant germs. Even
extremely diluted concentrations of drug residues harm the
reproductive systems of fish, frogs and other aquatic species.
In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency says there
are "well defined and controlled" limits to the amount of
pharmaceutical waste emitted by drug makers.
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