[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.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.dep.state.fl.us/pipermail/pharmwaste/attachments/20090126/5c3791c3/attachment.html


More information about the Pharmwaste mailing list