Chemical Wastelands
From the San Francisco Chronicle: “California bill would gauge levels of chemicals in people.”
State Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, introduced a bill Wednesday that would create the country’s first statewide program to accumulate data on measurements of toxic chemicals in the bodies of the general public.
This is the third time around for the “biomonitoring bill,” or SB1379, which has the support of environmental and physician groups but faces heavy opposition from the chemical industry.
GEE, I WONDER WHY?
Also, people, flushing your meds down the toilet could cause more than plumbing problems.
[Sewage] plants are designed to treat human waste and other biodegradable organic materials—not the medicines and chemicals in consumer products that make it through treatment and remain in the effluent that spills into the bay or ocean, and in the sludge that is used for landfill cover, incinerated, or placed in farmland.
“Some of the pharmaceuticals are definitely making it through sewage treatment plants,” said Phil Bobel, manager of the environmental compliance division for the city of Palo Alto and a spokesman for the agencywide Bay Area Pollution Prevention Group.
Studies of fish in waterways near Denver, in Lake Mead and in London’s Thames River have found changes in their reproductive systems that apparently are linked to pharmaceuticals that can disrupt the endocrine systems, sewer officials say.
I remember an old episode of Ally McBeal where our bleeding-heart bobbleheaded heroine self-righteously flushes her Prozac down the toilet. Watching her prance about on her chicken legs in that birth-canal-grazing miniskirt of hers made me livid, not only because I wanted to bitchslap her with a rancid fish carcass for being annoying, but also because her act was simply disrespectful of the 18.8 million Americans who are coping with depressive disorders (including many who cannot afford or have no access to proper medication). To reroute that tangent back to the original discourse, no flushie even your expired aspirin or Tylenol, please. Instead, check if your city organizes safe-medicine-disposal days or contact your local pharmacy for assistance.
Kathy said,
June 19, 2006 at 4:03 pm
As it is, I have enough guilt for my estrogen-heavy pill-altered pee and its effect on local fish populations, let alone pouring meds down the toilet…
Liz said,
June 20, 2006 at 3:39 pm
I’m horrified by the fact that people flush their meds down the toilet. Why did I not know that has been acceptable protocol? I always thought that any pharmaceuticals that were in the drinking water were there because as a whole, we are so doped up, and trace amounts of drugs are eliminated every time we pee. We really may be the first animals to truly soil our own nest, in a major way.
The Worsted Witch » Lawn of the Dead said,
September 20, 2006 at 5:11 pm
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