Don’t Drink The Water

TRACE AMOUNTS OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS FOUND IN AMERICA’S WATER SUPPLY

FITSNews - March 10, 2008 - Since we start each day with a two-liter bottle of Evian, what’s going on with the nation’s drinking water doesn’t really concern us all that much. We’re also bathed every morning by nubian princesses with hot spring water, in case you were wondering, so the fact that trace amounts of over 56 prescription drugs have been found in America’s water supply isn’t cause for alarm here at FITSNews. What is cause for alarm, however, is when Princess Imani Izzi misses a spot with the luffa.

Anyway, the same comfort level we have about this situation probably isn’t shared by the 41 million Americans who woke up this morning to read about the pharmaceutical cocktail that’s doubling as their tap water:

(An Associated Press) investigation found 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problem in Philadelphia; anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications in a portion of the treated water for 18.5 million people in Southern California; a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water in a water treatment plant serving 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey; a sex hormone in San Francisco; about six pharmaceuticals in the water for Washington D.C. and surrounding areas, three medications in the water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.

Yikes. Of course the good news is that pharmaceutical companies are richer than God and can hire teams of lawyers, lobbyists and spin doctors to make sure they never get in trouble for anything. The other good news is you probably need some of these drugs, anyway, and now all you have to do to get them is move to wherever they’re being dumped in your water.