Have a glass of water in Philadelphia, for example, and you're drinking tiny amounts of at least 56 pharmaceuticals or their byproducts.
Lake Meade, which is about 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas, supplies drinking water for Nevada, Arizona and California, and testing found trace levels of birth control, steroids, narcotics and other drugs in that water supply.
"It's a wake-up call for America," said Richard Pienciak, the AP's national investigative editor. "The unanswered question at this point is whether 50 years of exposure to small amounts of pharmaceuticals will have long-term adverse effects on the human body. "
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There is some new advice to avoid exacerbating the problem. Instead of flushing unneeded medications down the toilet, the new recommendation is to discard drugs by diluting them with water or coffee grounds, putting them in a tight container and throwing them in the garbage.
The best way to filter drugs out of tap water is called reverse osmosis, but it's considered too expensive for treatment plants to implement without proof that the pharmaceuticals in the water are a real health threat.
Reverse osmosis home kits are available from major plumbing supply outlets. Typical home water filters aren't designed to filter out drugs.
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