Pharmaceuticals in the Environment

 

Introduction: The U.S. Geological Survey and others have found antibiotics, hormones, steroids, and other pharmaceutical compounds in many streams throughout the United States (http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/emc/). They are typically found in mixtures and at low concentrations downstream from urbanized and agricultural livestock sources (http://www.extension.org/pages/Antibiotics_and_Hormones_in_Animal_Manure_Webcast), because treatment processes do not fully remove them from the wastewater before discharge into the stream or waste application to fields (http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/emc/sources_pathways.html).   The presence of many of these compounds in surface water throughout the world has only become widely studied over the last decade and little is known about the fate and potential effects of these compounds in the environment or implications for human exposure.

 

Why should we care?

 

http://www.epa.gov/ppcp/faq.html#Whatarethemajorissues

 

Antibiotic Resistance: Whether or not antibiotics in the environment are causing or correlated with increased antibiotic resistance in bacterial communities, particularly pathogenic bacteria, is an important and still open-ended question. The potential implication is that the number of drugs available for effective treatment of infections will be diminished. (http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/emc/antimicrobial_resistance.html; http://www.extension.org/pages/Pathogen_Webcasts)

http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/anti_resist.html 

http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/ 

 

Endocrine Disruption: Increased feminization and intersexed populations of fish communities have been demonstrated in several locations throughout the United States including the Potomic River, Boulder Creek, CO, and the Las Vegas Bay, Lake Mead, NV With increased urbanization and agricultural expansion there is the possibility that these effects can become more widespread and threaten the health of certain species and ecosystems. (http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/emc/endocrine_disruption.html; http://www.ecrc.usgs.gov/endocrine/summary.htm)

 

Chronic Effects: There are many questions regarding the chronic effects from continuous exposure to low concentrations of individual or mixtures of these compounds.  http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/emc/index.html)

 

Water Treatment Processes: Studies to understand what compounds are incompletely treated by wastewater plants, which compounds are readily transported to drinking water sources, and which compounds are not fully removed during drinking water treatment processes is important so that if a subset of compounds are regulated, knowledge will be available on the extent to which utilities will have to modify their water treatment processes to meet those requirements.

 

USGS role ---      

 

• Develop analytical methods to measure these compounds and their behavior in the environment

        http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/emc/methods_devel.html

      http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/est/es011055j_rev.html

 

• Characterize the presence and distribution of these compounds in the environment and exposed organisms

      http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/emc/environmental_occurrence.html

 

• Conduct toxicological studies on target organisms to determine uptake and assess effects of these compounds at environmental occurrence levels

        http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/emc/ecological_effects.html

 

 

Two local USGS resources have contributed to this effort:

Research Needs:

• Improve analytical capabilities for measuring these compounds in multiple environmental andwastewater media
• Better characterize the effects of chronic low dose exposure of chemical mixes on various organisms
• Better assess human exposure pathways and risk
• Better evaluate the effectiveness of drinking water and wastewater treatment technologies on removal of these compounds

 

 

Pharmaceuticals, Hormones, and Other Organic Wastewater Contaminants in U.S. Streams

 

Source Water Recon Q & A