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Saturday, October 27, 2001 7:57 PM

Birth control hormones in our drinking water

 

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/10/25/drugs_water/index1.html

 

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Scientists say they are not alarmed. They regard the drugs-in-the-water

phenomenon as a relatively low risk. The subtle health effects of

parts-per-trillion concentrations are devilishly hard to confirm. So in New

Mexico, it was no big deal when water engineers detected low concentrations

of birth control hormones, the anti-seizure medicine Dilantin, the

antidepressant Elavil and the painkiller Darvon. " We found a lot of Darvon, "

said Dennis McQuillan, a New Mexico water engineer. " I don't know what that

says about the culture in our state. " The audience in Minneapolis laughed.

Debra Moll, a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control, recited the list

of chemicals in Atlanta's environment as if she were reading the names of

old friends, ticking off diltiazem (brand name Cardizem, a heart drug),

metformin (aka Glucophage, for diabetics), gemfibrozil (i.e., Lopid, another

heart drug). Nobody was surprised.

 

Out in the aquatic environment, she noted, the CDC found eight antibiotics:

trimethoprim, sulfamethazine, sulfamethoxazole, sulfadimethoxine,

erythromcyin, roximthromycin, lincomycin and enrofloxacin. " Detection of

antibiotics in raw drinking water is of particular concern, " said Moll,

" because the presence of these chemicals in the environment may lead to the

development of resistant bacterial strains, thus diminishing the therapeutic

effectiveness of antibiotics. "

As Moll went on to say, some of the antibiotics detected were Class 1 drugs,

meaning physicians typically fall back on them when other antibiotics don't

work. Why might other antibiotics be ineffective? No controversy there:

general overuse of antibiotics by physicians and farmers. But the sheer

number of different antibiotics in the water supply, not to mention that

every broad category of antibiotics has been detected, make the water an

important new way for us to help dangerous bacteria develop ways to kill us

even faster than they could on their own.

 

 

Roderick Mackie, a researcher at the University of Illinois whose work was

not presented at the conference, has shown that resistant bacteria from one

hog farm can spread, via natural drainage processes, to another hog farm 300

yards away. Biologists have also been finding widespread antibiotic

resistance in prominent waterways like the Rio Grande as well as obscure

ones in agricultural states like Iowa and Illinois. Because different

species of bacteria can swap genes for resistance, even a little antibiotic

in water could allow the bugs to develop defense mechanisms that will prove

fatal to ailing people later.

 

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