Letters to the Editor:

[QUOTE]Confusing Advice:

Pharmaceuticals in the drinking water have been everywhere in the news lately.

As I was standing in the line at my local pharmacy reading the posted notices, I spied one explaining how to dispose of old medication.

 

One of our dogs does, he's not real picky.

 

if you're attached to a sewer your toilet water is getting recycled and pumped back to you!

 

so does mine.

 

The water used for the toilet and elsewhere in the house comes from the same source.

Once the water goes down the drain/is flushed away, it converges into a single location and gets pumped away for treatment.

Medication in the water most often cannot be disposed of in the similar way that they are able to get rid of fecal matter, soap and the like, meaning that it accumulates in the water in microscopic, unfiltrable components, and then gets pumped back into our homes.

I believe that even the smallest filtration systems and bacteria is not able to dispose of the dissolved medication in the water. Probably the only way to do so is to steam the water, but I think this is rarely done as it's expensive, and at the same time removes minerals and other things which don't do anything (bad) to the human body.

 

so potentially the water that gets flushed out of my toilet will end up in someone elses coffee? ahahah... good thing I live at the beginning of the river.

 

Depending on how your municipal water system is set up, you probably DO drink your toilet water.

The water leaves your toilet, travels through the sewer system to a water treatment plant where it's treated, then released into a lake/river/whatever. Which also serves as the source for the municipal water supply. (The inlet being physically removed from the outlet, of course. My understanding is that Chicago for a while had issues when inlets being too close to outlets in Lake Michigan...)

 

Most places use either river water, which can pass many times thought the cycle, or well water, typically pre-historic water, but occasionally impacted by sewage waste. Chicago has huge wells that draw from the whole region (cone of depression goes almost to wisconsin (thieving FIBS), including the lake, and yesss had/has significant problems with sewage...

 

In London they say there's so much prozac in the drinking supply that everyone is theraputic.