Sunshine and Light

Pharmaceuticals in the drinking water

Ok....just freakish. But the good news is if I get an infection of any kind, I can just head to Philly to down a boatload of amoxycillin, azithromycin, and tetracycline. Who needs government health care when all you REALLY need is a cool glass of tap water.

And not to be insensitive, but quite honestly it's hard for me to get worked up about wildlife when we're still worrying about what this does to humans. One problem at a time, sarge.

Update: Spanky's take is here. While I agree that a major factor that keeps us from cleaning up this mess (so to speak) is engineering, I would quibble with the point that this is only a result of flushing toilets. If you check out this New York Times article, they talk about the steroid level downstream of a Nebraska feed lot is four times higher than the level upstream from the feed lot. It sounds to me that a certain amount of this is our compensating for some pretty crappy lifestyle decisions with a "Better living through chemistry" approach. We need more meat (bring on the steroids), eat like &%(#@ which means we have poorer health, more need for heart meds, and obesity drugs, etc. So while the whole thing is distressing, alas we cannot say it's surprising. We are free to abuse our bodies however we like. Now we know that there are more repercussions than we realized.

posted by MyHusbandRules @ 10:12 AM