Drugs In Your Water = Yummy!

1:59 pm EST September 14th, 2008 | News | 5 Comments

Delicious.

U.S. hospitals and long-term care facilities annually flush millions of pounds of unused pharmaceuticals down the drain, pumping contaminants into America’s drinking water, according to an ongoing Associated Press investigation.

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5 Responses to “Drugs In Your Water = Yummy!”

  1. Duros Hussein62 says:
    September 14, 2008 at 10:29 pm

    Hold up. If they’re flushing them, how does it end up in the drinking water? Those are supposed to be separate systems.

  2. Sean D. Martin says:
    September 15, 2008 at 12:17 pm

    Those are supposed to be separate systems.

    They are? I know next to nothing about municipal sewage systems, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t two completely separate sets of pipes running from my house/neighborhood, one from the toilet and on from the sink two feet away from it.

    Certainly folks put stuff down the sink (pain thinner when washing paint brushes, for example) that one would not want in the drinking supply. Seems to me, water coming out of a house or office or hospital that is going to be circulated back into the drinking supply has to be cleaned no matter where it comes from.

  3. Duros Hussein 62 says:
    September 15, 2008 at 1:13 pm

    but I’m pretty sure there aren’t two completely separate sets of pipes running from my house/neighborhood, one from the toilet and on from the sink two feet away from

    You ARE kidding, right?

  4. Sean D. Martin says:
    September 15, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    You ARE kidding, right?

    Only to the extent that I actually have a septic system, so it does all flow to the same place.

    As for the rest, I admitted knowing next to nothing about waste water flow and stand ready to be enlightened. It just seems to me that if there is sufficient concern about what goes down to toilet to keep it separate from what goes down the sink, that there should be similar concern about what goes down the sink.

  5. Sean D. Martin says:
    September 16, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    Plumbing isn’t as hot a topic as Palin, so not altogether surprised to see no further comments on this particular thread. But I did go do a little bit of research and from what I have found it seems my view of plumbing systems (ultimately one drain carries out both toilet and sink wastewater) is correct, and not the “separate systems” Duros mentions..

    See here for one typical overview description.