Monday, March 24, 2008
56 drugs
Amy Goodman of DEMOCRACY NOW interviewed Jeff Donn today. Donn is a medical writer and a journalist with the associated press who recently co-authored a nationwide study on pharmaceutical contamination found in drinking water. The full transcript is available online at DEMOCRACY NOW.According to Donn our drinking water in Philadelphia has 56 different pharmaceuticals, from sex hormones to chemo therapy medications, you name it, we're drinking it. One of the things Donn said that was interesting was that NOT ONE SINGLE municipality in America is required to test their water supplies for pharmaceuticals, just pesticides and other industrial pollutants.
What's alarming, Donn said, is that with industrial chemicals, while they're harmful to human's of course, our bodies work at isolating these chemicals to rid ourselves of them, BUT WITH pharmaceuticals the opposite occurs because they are designed to work with our blood and tissue and organs. HOW CREEPY!
Amy Goodman asked Donn about bottled water, and Donn's report shows that these drugs have seeped deep into the ground, contaminating aquifers. Filters for tap water that we can buy in stores don't seem to be very much help either. What's the good news? There was no good news in this story. I kept waiting for them to give us that, but it never appeared. What are we to do? I don't know.
CAConrad
