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Experts say local water safe to drink
County’s drinking water and wastewater is not tested for pharmaceuticals
By SUZETTE PORTER
Article published on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 |
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![[Image]](/content_images/031808_pco-01.jpg) |
| Keeping water supplies clean for people and their pets involves everyone working together to protect the environment. |
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PINELLAS COUNTY – A story by the Associated Press about drugs in U.S. water supplies caused quite a stir last week.
The question on everyone’s mind was “is the water safe to drink?”
Tampa Bay Newspapers interviewed three people in the know about local water supplies: Jan Tracy, education coordinator, at Pinellas County Utilities’ South Cross Bayou Water Reclamation Facility; Chris Owen, water quality assurance officer with Tampa Bay Water; and Jeannine Mallory, public information officer with Pinellas County Health Department.
All three said it was safe to drink Pinellas County’s tap water.
But to the question of “are there drugs in Pinellas County’s water?” The answer was maybe.
“We have not tested for them (drugs),” Owen said. “Not because we avoided it, but because labs with the capability to do this kind of work are not common. This kind of testing takes very specialized research labs.”
Tracy also confirmed that the county’s wastewater was not tested for pharmaceuticals.
And, it should be noted that there is no requirement that drinking water or wastewater be tested for pharmaceuticals, the experts said.
Officials have known since 2002 when a study was published by the U.S. Geological Survey that there are a broad range of chemicals found in residential, industrial and agricultural wastewaters in low concentrations downstream from areas of intense urbanization and animal production.
“The chemicals include human and veterinary drugs (including antibiotics), natural and synthetic hormones, detergent metabolites, plasticizers, insecticides and fire retardants,” USGS officials said.
The first-ever national-scale study of organic wastewater contaminants in streams involved collection and analysis of water samples from 139 streams in 30 states during 1999 and 2000.
“Streams were sampled that were considered susceptible to contamination from various wastewater sources, such as those downstream from intense urbanization or livestock production. Thus, the results of this study are not considered representative of all streams,” according to the study notes.
Scientists have known there was a potential problem in the making since 2002. So what caused the most recent uproar?
AP published the results of an investigation on March 10 that showed a large variety of pharmaceuticals had been found in the drinking water for at least 41 million Americans.
The areas contained in the research were large metropolitan areas and did not include Tampa Bay.
“To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose,” the AP said. “But the presence of so many prescription drugs - and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen - in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.”
Mallory said although AP’s study provided information that “was good to know,” there was no documented threat of health problems from drinking water supplies.
“Concentrations are so low that there’s no reason for alarm,” she said.
Owen said she did some “quick and dirty calculations” that showed she would have to drink four liters of water a day for 70 days before she would “just barely consume the amount equivalent to one antibiotic capsule.”
“Parts per billion or trillion is pretty low,” she said. “To get an idea of how low, for example, parts per trillion would be the equivalent of trying to find one person in China.”
Owen said water supplied by Tampa Bay Water met all federal and state requirements. She also said that water discharged from wastewater plants was not used in production of the blended water product sold by Tampa Bay Water, so “it’s less likely we’ll see many of the compounds (pharmaceuticals) at all.”
Owen said the AP study was good because it alerted the public about a potential problem, but it was the job of the federal Environmental Agency and the Center for Disease Control to take the next steps to study to see if there were any possible negative health impacts.
The advent of research labs with the capability to test at such minute concentrations is the biggest impetus behind the new information, Owen said.
But, the labs are still scarce and the tests are very expensive.
“For now, we’ll just continue to concentrate on what we know is a problem.”
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Article published on Tuesday, March 18, 2008
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Tampa Bay Newspapers
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