<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 19.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="6" style="font: 24.0px Times"><b>Drugs tainting water in India</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 19.0px Times"><b>Researchers report alarming levels of pharmaceuticals</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">By Margie Mason</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">The Associated Press</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">January 26, 2009</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><font face="Times" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Times">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.<br> <br> 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. <br> <br> Half of the drugs were measured at the highest levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers said.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> "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?"<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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.<br> <br> "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."<br> <br> 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. <br> <br> Until Larsson's research, there had been widespread consensus among researchers that drug makers were not a source.<br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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.<br> </font></p></body></html>