Pharmaceutical Waste
Drugs, Personal Care Products, Chemotherapy, Radioactive Waste
Prescription drugs have long been part of the industrialized world. In 1991, sales for retail prescription in the United States were $42.7 billion. Eight years later in 1999, sales had almost tripled in volume to $111.3 billion.
According to Stephen Harrod Buhner in The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines to Life on Earth (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2002), this increase, expected to rise substantially in years to come, is ominous for America and the industrialized economy.
Because many of these drugs are not biodegradable, they enter the ecosystem through excretion into waste treatment systems.
Drugs and Developmental Abnormalities
In 1992, German researchers found high concentrations of clofibric acid, a drug used to lower cholesterol levels in the blood, in ground waters near the North Sea, the Danube River and the Po River. Subsequent studies located high levels of this drug in Swiss lakes and streams. Because Switzerland did not have plants that manufacture the drug, researchers traced the cause to human excretion (Heberer,"Determination of the clofibric acid and N-phenysulfonyl-sarcosine insewage, river and drinking water,"Journal of Environmental Analytical Chemistry 3, 1997).
All drugs eventually end up in water and soil; they are present in measurable quantities in most rivers and lakes; the highest levels are found in the effluent streams emerging from waste treatment plants.
One researcher at Trent University in Ontario detected estrone, a type of estrogen, in waste water effluent (Janet Raloff, "Excreted drugs:something looks fishy," Science News 157, no.25, June 17,2000). Estrone is known to produce sexual and developmental abnormalities in fish. Excess estrogen in the biosphere has been blamed for reduced sperm count in American males, early puberty in girls and obesity in children.
Studies have also shown a connection between these drugs and abnormalities in the immune and nervous systems of man and animals.
Non biodegradable Personal Care Products
Even non-prescription personal care products designed to protect the body from the sun or to make people look better, smell better, age better leave traces that are damaging to the environment. Fragrances present in these products are not biodegradable; they tend to concentrate over time in the body tissues of all species in the ecosystem.
Sunscreen chemicals enter the water system directly from sun- bathers and swimmers each year; traces of these chemicals have been found in high concentrations in fish, especially in lakes used mainly for recreational purposes.
Chemotherapy and Pharmaceutical Waste
In the United States, about a million people per year undergo chemotherapy treatment for cancer. Chemotherapy drugs are mutagenic (they can create genetic mutations), carcinogenic (cause cancer) and teratogenic (cause malformations in embryo and fetus).
Bodily excretions saturated with these drugs are toxic waste. Approximately 650,000 tons of bodily wastes enter the sewage stream every year. These drugs are not affected by sewage treatment; nor are they biodegradable. Researchers have expressed concern over the presence of these toxic chemicals in the ecosystem.
Radioisotopes and Radioactive Waste
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of pharmaceutical pollution is the use of industrial radioactive materials. Nuclear medicine employs radiation to provide diagnostic information and to treat cancers. Radioactive isotopes are also used for the manufacture of radioisotopes in pacemakers, smoke detection instruments and X-ray and scanning equipment.
According to a recent report, radioisotopes are found in 40,000 medical procedures in the United States on a daily basis.
The problem with radioactive technology lies in its waste which cannot be destroyed and which, despite being buried in landfill sites, is capable of leaking into the biosphere. What is yet unknown are the long-term effects such radioactive waste can produce in living organisms in the ecosystem.
What is known, however, is that radioisotopes are usually present in the body long enough to be excreted into toilets, moved through treatment plants and eventually into water supplies. Bodies of patients who do not recover from cancer treatment, which account for two and a half million Americans each year, become a burgeoning source of radioactive pollution through crematories and cemeteries.
The major problem with pharmaceutical waste is that the true extent of the dangers of this toxicity is yet unknown. Modern society has become so dependent on pharmaceutical technology it will be a major task to wean itself off drugs.
Drugs and Pharmaceutical Waste
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