Ellen Wilson
[email protected]
301-652-1558
Embargoed for release with a.m. papers,
Saturday, March 21, 1998
NEW RESEARCH SHOWS EVIDENCE OF PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS
IN EUROPEAN DRINKING WATER, LAKES, RIVERS, AND STREAMS
Pharmaceuticals as Potential Water Pollutants Unregulated in U.S.,
With Risks to People, Wildlife Unknown
WASHINGTON, D.C., March 21, 1998 -- New studies on water supplies in
Europe are finding evidence of cholesterol-lowering drugs, antibiotics,
analgesics, antiseptics, beta-blocker heart drugs, and other
pharmaceuticals in drinking water, lakes, rivers, and streams, according to
an article published in today's issue of Science News. The European
scientists have ascertained that the drugs are coming from human wastes.
In some cases, 50 to 90 percent of an administered drug may be excreted
from the body in its original or in its biologically active form. In other
cases, partially degraded drugs may be converted back into their active
form through chemical reactions that occur in the environment.
The new research may herald what could be found in U.S. waters if they
were monitored for pharmaceuticals, according to the article. At present,
jurisdiction for directly monitoring U.S. waters for drugs falls neither
under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
nor under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As to whether
traces of pharmaceuticals pose a risk to humans, wildlife or aquatic
ecosystems, according to the article, there is practically no data for
gauging their potential toxicity.
"The issue of drugs in water is certainly an area where we could use a lot
more science," says James F. Pendergast, acting director of the EPA
division that regulates what comes out of sewage-treatment plants. "To
date, information on hazards (to wildlife or to people) at the nanogram
level just hasn't been developed."
But, it seems, there is strong reason to believe that drugs are making it
into water supplies across Europe and most likely in the U.S. For quite a
while, notes Pendergast, water-quality engineers have recognized that one
of the highest-volume contaminants emerging in sewage-plant
effluent--especially early in the morning--is caffeine, a drug excreted by
all those people religiously downing a cup or two of coffee every morning.
This year, the Swiss Federal Research Station in Wädenswil has
documented the presence of clofibric acid, a widely-used
cholesterol-lowering drug, throughout Switzerland's waters -- from rural
mountain lakes to rivers flowing through densely populated areas, according
to the Science News article. The ubiquity of this compound, which is not
even manufactured in Switzerland, argued against the contamination stemming
from some industrial accident or spill, but from human wastes, says Swiss
scientist Hans-Rudolf Buser.
Science News details an earlier study by scientists with the Technical
University of Berlin showing high levels of clofibric acid (4 parts per
billion or "ppb") in Berlin groundwater and at levels of up to 0.2 ppb in
all tap water sampled in the study. A Berlin team of scientists has also
found in Berlin's drinking water additional drugs that regulate blood-lipid
levels (such as phenazone and fenofibrate) and analgesics (including
ibuprofen and diclofenac).
In other research in Germany, chemist Thomas A. Ternes, with the municipal
water research laboratory in Wiesbaden, Germany, launched a water
monitoring project and detected 30 of 60 common pharmaceuticals in sewage,
treated water, and in nearly all streams and rivers in Germany. These
include: lipid-lowering drugs, antibiotics, analgesics, antiseptics,
beta-blocker heart drugs, and drugs to control epilepsy.
The concentrations of antibiotics being found in German wastewater suggest
that "these antibiotics may be present at levels of consequence to bacteria
-- levels that could not only alter the ecology of the environment but also
give rise to antibiotic resistance," says Stuart Levy, who directs the
Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University in
Boston.
As compounds designed to promote well-being, drugs are regulated by health
departments in most countries. However, these agencies possess little
expertise in protecting natural ecosystems and water supplies and tend not
to look at pharmaceuticals as potential pollutants. This, despite the fact
that 90 percent of a delivered drug may exit the body in urine and feces,
according to the article. Further, until now, the technology available to
detect medicines in water were too crude to measure low drug
concentrations. Now, however, chemists can routinely detect tiny
(parts-per-trillion) amounts of waterborne pollutants.
Instead of monitoring water directly, however, regulators in Europe and in
the U.S. have relied on estimates, formulated by drug manufacturers, of a
new drug's projected concentration in public water after use. In the U.S.,
the FDA has recently reduced such environmental reporting requirements
unless the manufacturer's modeling data suggest that a drug's concentration
would reach 1 part per billion. However, the FDA does not require
monitoring of water supplies to see whether concentrations of drugs in
water match what drug manufacturer's models had predicted.
Science News reports each week on the important news in all fields of
science for the general reader. In its 76th year, the magazine is
published by Science Service. Visit the Science News website at
http://www.sciencenews.org.
###
RSS