A year or so ago I saw a news story about drugs like birth control, anti-depressants and viagra showing up in the drinking water in Los Angeles. The newscaster said that people must be flushing their drugs down the toilet in order for them to end up in our drinking water.
It is difficult for me to imagine large numbers of women flushing birth control pills. Or middle aged men flushing their beloved viagra.
This was all shocking enough. But the news story ended with a matter-of-fact blurb that, by the way, Los Angeles had started cycling treated waste water into the reservoirs used for drinking water. I almost fell out of my seat at how flippant this last comment was thrown into the report.
This news story (linked to below) shows that this is happening nationwide and admits that these drugs show up in the reservoirs because we secrete the excess from our bodies through our urine. The story kind of dances around the inference that we are drinking treated waste water but gets to it eventually.
And fish are being "altered" by these drugs. We are being told that the trace amounts of these pharmaceuticals are too small to affect us. Oh, really? Researchers are finding male fish who are turning into female fish. Some even grow eggs. And we are to believe that continued exposure to this is not going to affect our children? Or ourselves?
Sometimes I feel that we are a generation being used as guinea pigs. With all the genetically modified crops, cows pumped full of growth hormones... all this technology has not had their long term effects tested. One day, years from now, our government will tell us, "Whoops! Sorry about that!"
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