PFPC Daily - November 13, 2004

Prozac and painkillers found in tap water
Drinking water contains traces of nine drugs, new study finds

Vancouver Sun - November 13, 2004

By Sarah Staples

The federal government's first study of pharmaceuticals in drinking
water will confirm traces of common painkillers, anti-cholesterol
drugs and the antidepressant Prozac are ending up in the treated
water that Canadians drink, CanWest News Service has learned.

A study by researchers from the National Water Research Institute for
Health and Environment Canada, designed to gauge how efficiently
plants removed traces of drugs from drinking water, found nine
different drugs in water samples taken near 20 drinking water
treatment plants across southern Ontario.

The drugs were mainly from a class known as "acidic pharmaceuticals,"
and included the painkillers ibuprofen and neproxin, and gemfibrozil,
a cholesterol-lowering medication. Concentrations were in the parts
per trillion -- comparable to one cent in $10 billion. "Barely
detectable" levels of Prozac were also found.

The worst contamination came from treatment plants located near
rivers or downstream from sewage treatment plants, as opposed to those
plants sourcing water from lakes or groundwater.

The study has been submitted to the British scientific journal Water
Research and is expected to be published sometime in the New Year.

While the amounts are well below prescription doses, experts from the
NWRI say confirmation of even scant levels of a burgeoning assortment
of drugs in Canada's drinking water is a troubling find warranting
further investigation.

"It's kind of a brand new ball game and we don't know enough," said
Jim Maguire, director of the institute's aquatic ecosystem protection
research branch.

Residues of hormones are well known to disrupt the reproductive
abilities of amphibians and fish. There is also suspicion that
antibiotic residues working their way up the food chain may promote
resistance to the drugs, while many other medications could harm
fetuses, and people who are ill or infirm.

The effects of pesticides are better understood and regulated in
Canada than personal care products, such as lotions and cosmetics, or
prescription pharmaceuticals, said Maguire.

"You need to know how long lasting [the contamination is], and if
it's being continually reintroduced -- but there's no country in the
world that has enough information," he said. "We're kind of like
where we were 25 years ago with PCBs and dioxides."

The government study is the first official acknowledgement of
long-standing suspicions voiced by Canada's water-quality experts.

Transcripts obtained by CanWest News Service of a Health
Canada-sponsored international workshop in 2002 show government
chemists voicing serious concern over the possible negative effects
of trace pharmaceuticals, at a time when U.S. and European studies
were starting to reveal antibiotics and chemotherapeutics, drugs for
epilepsy and depression, anti-inflammatory drugs, veterinary drugs,
fragrances such as musk, and hormones in treated sewage runoff and
tap water.

Informal private testing carried out last year on behalf of media
outlets revealed residues of gemfibrozil and the anticonvulsant drug
carbamazepine in tap water from towns and cities across Canada.
Mo

The federal government isn't testing for the full range of drugs that
could be in Canada's potable water supply, preferring initially to
limit its search to "acidic" drugs because they are easiest to spot
using existing pesticide analysis techniques, said Kent Burnison, an
NWRI microbiologist who co-wrote the study.

Ontario's water was surveyed not because of any special concern over
its safety, but because samples had to be taken near NWRI's
laboratory to preserve their integrity, he said.

The United States and Europe -- which acknowledged pharmaceutical
accumulation several years before Canada began studying the
phenomenon -- have already begun releasing the first disturbing
results of experiments to understand the impact of drugs in the water
on fish and wildlife.

In October, for example, the U.S. Geological Survey and the
Department of Environmental Protection, revealed 42 to 79 per cent of
the male smallmouth bass from a section of the Potomac River known to
harbour nicotine-related chemicals and caffeine traces have started
producing eggs.

Studies in Colorado waterways recently encountered more examples of
"intersex" males, as well as female fish that are having trouble
reproducing.

The working hypothesis is that leftover estrogen from chicken
droppings or human hormones, not traditional pollutants from
agriculture or mining, are disrupting the fish's reproduction.

In Europe and Japan, scientists are turning their attention to
devising ways of cleaning drinking water using new, hypersensitive
nano-scale filtration materials.

Burnison's lab is in the midst of a multi-year study of the
environmental impacts of the drugs found so far in Canada's drinking
water.

With a growing and aging population of baby boomers who will rely
increasingly on medication, water experts fear the problem may only
get worse.

"You may prove that individual pharmaceuticals aren't doing that much
[to the environment], but when you've got a 100 or more compounds
together, what is the synergistic effect?" he said.

"Is it one plus one equals two, or does it equal three and four?"

FOUND IN THE WATER

Detectable levels of many common drugs have been found in Canadian
drinking water.

- Analgesics ibuprofen and neproxin.

- Antidepressant Prozac.

- Anti-cholesterol medication gemfibrozil.

- Anticonvulsant drug carbamazepine.

- Traces of nicotine, caffeine and estrogen are detectable in some
wildlife.