Water re-use means we are all consuming a cocktail of other people’s leftover medicines, but measuring their impact is almost impossible. A recent analysis of streams in the US detected an entire pharmacy: diabetic meds, muscle relaxants, opioids, antibiotics, antidepressants and more. Drugs have even been found in crops irrigated by treated waste water. It looks as if drug residues in our drinking water are set to rise, with one in five Americans using three or more prescription every  30 days. Fresh water isn’t immune either. Paul Bradley of the US Geological Survey and his team checked streams in the eastern US for 108 chemicals, a drop in the bucket of the 3000 drug compounds in use. One river alone had 45. And even though two-thirds of the streams weren’t fed by treated waste water, 95 per cent of them had the anti-diabetic drug metformin, probably from street run-off or leaky sewage pipes (Environmental Science & Technology, doi.org/bqdb).

The immediate drug effects in healthy adults, at levels 10,000 times lower than from a 400 milligram pill,  are miniscule, but the effect on small children exposed to low levels of pharmaceuticals for a generation, is not known. An adult prescribed multiple drugs is more likely to experience side effects, and risks rise exponentially with each drug taken by a person over 65. So could tiny doses of dozens of drugs have an impact on your health?  What happens to you after a lifetime of drugs at very low concentrations?  These drugs have been individually approved, but there have been no studies as to what happens when they’re together in the same soup.  Endocrine disruptors, artificial chemicals found in a variety of materials, for instance were ignored previously, but are now linked to breast cancer and abnormal development in children.

There are two possible solutions. One is to upgrade water treatment facilities. It’s an option Switzerland has gone for, but it isn’t cheap – it will cost the country over $1 billion. In England, it is estimated that just removing the hormone estradiol from sewage plants would cost billions of pounds.

The second answer is to have greener pharmaceuticals that degrade readily in the environment. It is possible to redesign drugs for heart disease so that they degrade faster in the environment (RSC Advances, doi.org/bqdg), though these molecules require testing before clinical use. Most pharmaceutical companies will not research this idea at their own expense, surprise., surprise! (extracted from an article by Anthony King in the  New Scientist).

I am sure that Epicurus would advocate a blitz on this problem and if it has to be at the cost of raising taxes, so be it.  One of the most disagreeable effects of the current anti-intellectualism is the distrust of scientists.  It is true that a tiny minority have soiled the reputation of the many.  I am thinking of those who were paid to doubt man-made climate change, those who dreamt up pseudo facts for the tobacco companies, and now the sugar and related industries.  But the vast majority of scientists are honest, hard workers, trying to improve the lot of mankind.  There are so many issues they can and should address – water full of drugs is one of them.