What to do With Your Prescription Drugs.

Today, October 29, 2011, is National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, sponsored by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) (http://woodbridge.patch.com/articles/fed-agencies-disagree-on-whether-pill-flushing-harms-the-water-supply ). All across the United States, public and private entities of all sorts are providing an avenue for people to turn in those unused prescription drugs taking up space in their medicine cabinets, rather than throw them in the trash or flush them down the toilet. Federal Agency’s, however, seem to be at odds over the goals of this event, and others like it. The DEA has said it isn’t concerned with the environmental effects of dumping drugs down the toilet and having them flushed into the environment; they just don’t want them getting into the hands of those to whom they were not prescribed. That’s a worthy goal, but so is keeping the drugs out of the environment and our water; can’t they consider more than one goal simultaneously? The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm101653.htm ) is not only OK with throwing them in the trash or flushing them, they recommend it, and don’t think it poses any threat to the health of the environment or those who have to drink the water somewhere down river, so to speak. That seems a bit short sighted and contrary to a growing list of research, at least when it comes to the environmental effects (http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2263 , http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/10/05/pharmaceuticals-in-the-water-supply-is-this-a-threat/ ). And the EPA is adamantly against throwing them away or flushing, acknowledging that they are a threat to the environment and that, even though no human health effects have been proven, maybe it’s a good idea to be cautious until we know more (http://water.epa.gov/scitech/swguidance/ppcp/index.cfm ).

It would be nice if all three of these agencies could come to terms with all the reasons not throwing prescription drugs in the garbage or flushing them down the toilet is a good idea, and speak with one voice on the matter, but that may be too much to ask of them. All you and I need to know is that for lots of reasons, it’s a good idea to take those drugs to an official drop off location rather than do anything else with them.

California Public Health Goals

On Friday, July 28, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, or OEHHA (people just say “Oh-we-ha” for short – sounds like something you’d say at a rodeo), set the Public Health Goal (PHG) for chromium 6 at 0.020 ug/L. That will start the process moving forward toward setting a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) here in the state of California. But what is a PHG and how are they set by this funny sounding group, OEHHA? For a chemical compound or element that is suspected of having adverse health effects, studies need to be conducted – lot’s and lot’s of studies. These studies can be conducted by OEHHA themselves, or they may use data from other studies conducted by health effects professionals and groups all over the country or even the world. These studies test for carcinogenic (cancer causing) and non-carcinogenic health effects, and many of them focus primarily on those sub-sets of the population that are most at risk, which usually means pregnant women, children, and the elderly. Studies are usually conducted on animals, and then the data is extrapolated to humans, but data may also be obtained from humans in areas where people are actually exposed to the study compound or element because it’s already present in their drinking water or food source. OEHHA looks at all these studies and through the magic of toxicological statistics (at least it seems like magic to me), they come up with a number that they define as the PHG. This number is designed to represent the estimated “one in one million” lifetime cancer risk level for the compound or element in question. This means that for every million people who drink two liters of water with that level of the compound or element daily for 70 years, no more than one person would be expected to develop cancer. The “one-in-one million” risk level is widely accepted by doctors and scientists as the “negligible risk” standard. One of the difficulties with setting these PHG’s is that many times, the data from all those health effects studies is not as straight forward as it may seem. There is a lot of interpretation that goes on, and the OEHHA, like most health effects groups, tend to be conservative in how things are interpreted, resulting in very conservative numbers. Of course, this also results in a good deal of controversy, discussion, and misunderstanding surrounding any PHG. Once a PHG has been set, the process for determining an MCL begins, and that must take into account a lot of other information, such as whether the compound or element is present in drinking water; if laboratory methods exist to detect it in drinking water; and if there are best available technologies (BAT) available to treat for it at a reasonable cost.

California Public Health Goals

On Friday, July 28, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, or OEHHA (people just say “Oh-we-ha” for short – sounds like something you’d say at a rodeo), set the Public Health Goal (PHG) for chromium 6 at 0.020 ug/L. That will start the process moving forward toward setting a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) here in the state of California. But what is a PHG and how are they set by this funny sounding group, OEHHA? For a chemical compound or element that is suspected of having adverse health effects, studies need to be conducted – lot’s and lot’s of studies. These studies can be conducted by OEHHA themselves, or they may use data from other studies conducted by health effects professionals and groups all over the country or even the world. These studies test for carcinogenic (cancer causing) and non-carcinogenic health effects, and many of them focus primarily on those sub-sets of the population that are most at risk, which usually means pregnant women, children, and the elderly. Studies are usually conducted on animals, and then the data is extrapolated to humans, but data may also be obtained from humans in areas where people are actually exposed to the study compound or element because it’s already present in their drinking water or food source. OEHHA looks at all these studies and through the magic of toxicological statistics (at least it seems like magic to me), they come up with a number that they define as the PHG. This number is designed to represent the estimated “one in one million” lifetime cancer risk level for the compound or element in question. This means that for every million people who drink two liters of water with that level of the compound or element daily for 70 years, no more than one person would be expected to develop cancer. The “one-in-one million” risk level is widely accepted by doctors and scientists as the “negligible risk” standard. One of the difficulties with setting these PHG’s is that many times, the data from all those health effects studies is not as straight forward as it may seem. There is a lot of interpretation that goes on, and the OEHHA, like most health effects groups, tend to be conservative in how things are interpreted, resulting in very conservative numbers. Of course, this also results in a good deal of controversy, discussion, and misunderstanding surrounding any PHG. Once a PHG has been set, the process for determining an MCL begins, and that must take into account a lot of other information, such as whether the compound or element is present in drinking water; if laboratory methods exist to detect it in drinking water; and if there are best available technologies (BAT) available to treat for it at a reasonable cost.

What is a contaminant?

When most people think of contaminants, they think of some nasty chemical that’s polluting the land or water; something that leaked out of a tank somewhere; that was illegally dumped along some lonesome road in the middle of the night; or that is the result of the manufacture of some industrial chemical. And in some instances, any or all of those scenarios may very well lead to contamination of the water supply. But if you look at the EPA web site where they discuss and list all of the “contaminants” that they currently regulate in drinking water, ( http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/index.cfm ), you will also find a lot of compounds that are naturally occurring; no one dumped them, manufactured them, or otherwise “polluted” the environment with them. They are every bit as much a part of the environment as the water itself. That doesn’t mean they can’t be harmful – arsenic is naturally occurring, but ingest enough of it and it can still kill you. Contrary to so many marketing campaigns that make you believe that “natural products” are somehow inherently safe, they can in fact be just as, if not more harmful than anything created by man. When I was taking Botany in college, someone asked my professor what the definition of a weed was. His response was that a weed is any plant that is somewhere you don’t want it to be. Likewise for drinking water, saying something is a contaminant doesn’t mean it’s the result of some toxic spill or other pollution. It means that, no matter what the source, it’s just something in the water that we don’t want there at more than a certain level.

Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule 3

The 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) require that EPA establish criteria for a program to monitor unregulated contaminants and identify no more than 30 contaminants to be monitored every five years. Known as the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, or UCMR, the proposal for the third Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR 3) was signed by EPA Administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, on February 17, 2011. All Public Water Systems (PWSs) serving more than 10,000 people and 800 representative PWSs serving 10,000 or fewer people would monitor for these 28 contaminants during a 12-month period some time between January 2013 through December 2015. Groundwater only systems would have to sample twice, with each sampling event 6 months apart, while surface water systems would have to sample 4 times, with each sampling event being 3 months apart. The contaminants to be tested for can be divided into Hormones, Volatile Organics, a Synthetic Organic, Metals, an Oxyhalide Anion, and some Perfluorinated compounds. This last group of compounds is particularly interesting. They are used in products such as Teflon, Scotchgaurd, and other stain, oil, or water-resistant products. They are extremely persistent in the environment, and have been found in blood samples from people almost everywhere researchers have looked.