Impact of pharmaceuticals on human health through water

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Dear professionals,

my colleague attended a meeting which dealt with the "Priority Substances in the Field of Water". Background of the meeting was the change of appendix X of the Water Framework Directive which deals with those substances. One of the discussions circulated around the impact of pharmaceuticals (or to be precise residues of pharmaceuticals) in water resources. The representative of the pharma industry argued that there is no scientific evidence of negative impacts of those substances on human health (yet).

I would like to know if you guys know anything about it? Is there any report published about this? I doubt that there are no impacts and if there are no direct health impacts I can imagine that there might be negative impacts on the environment .

Answers/links/advices where to look up/... are highly appreciated in preparation for the next meetings.

Thanks in advance,

Melina Tenbrock

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4 Answers

  1. WHO recent report on pharmaceuticals in drinking water

    Look at this report. http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/2011/pharmaceuticals/en/ Key conclusions: "Trace quantities of pharmaceuticals in drinking-water are very unlikely to pose risks to human health because of the substantial margin of exposure or margin of safety between the concentrations detected and the concentrations likely to evoke a pharmacological effect. "Concerns over pharmaceuticals should not divert the attention and valuable resources of water suppliers and regulators from the various bacterial, viral and protozoan waterborne pathogens and other chemical priorities, such as lead and arsenic. "The current levels of exposure to pharmaceuticals in drinking-water also suggest that the development of formal guideline values for pharmaceuticals in the WHO Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality is unwarranted."

  2. Hi! There are currently initiating studies on the subject (presence and treatment of pharmaceuticals in water) to the Master's program in Environmental Engineering at the Federal University of Ouro Preto. I believe the Course Coordinator (Sergio) is directing a student (Marina Tonucci) in research on the removal of pharmaceuticals in water abastacimento. access to course site - http://www.proamb.ufop.br/ good job!

  3. Thanks for this comment and the documents Mr Walder. It seems really a big problem that we cannot "trace back" the responsible source of pollutants efficiently. I hope that in the near future research can come up with something useful to improve the situation as I assume that ordinary citizens are the ones suffering (financially and in terms of health) from the pollution of big industries without knowing about it. And, as usual, environment is threatend by "unknown reactions/elements" of pollutants-thats scary!

  4. Dear colleagues, There are several studies on endocrine disrupting substances in treated wastewater. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has worked on that. I remember around 2000 an article was pubished in the newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, informing that a male trout was changing sex within 3 weeks living in the outlet of a Swiss Water Treatment Plant. Now not all endocrine disrupting substances are due to pharmaceuticals, many other chemical products of daily use, also cosmetics have such properties. So it is actually very difficult to attribute responsibilities as in wastewater you have continuously recombination of chemical substances leading to new partially unnown elements. This substances called micropollutants, are a major problem for our rivers and lakes. Studie and trials are carried out, among others at the wastewater treatment plant of Lausanne who is using leading technologies to trap the micropollutants. Here are two older publications which could interest you: http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/eserv/eth:27393/eth-27393-01.pdf http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/eserv/eth:27246/eth-27246-01.pdf