It’s a normal way to begin the day. Start the coffee pot and head to the bathroom to take a familiar dose of pills: antibiotics, birth control, antidepressants, painkillers.

Aquatic and other animals are waking up to their own dose of drugs as well. Fish ingest persistent residue from hormone replacement therapy pills and chemical dust from carpet moves up through the food chain to bald eagles and polar bears.

Drinking water, according to a growing body of scientific evidence, already contains trace amounts of caffeine before it hits the coffee grounds. And a multitude of pharmaceuticals, veterinary medicines and other industrial and household chemicals are flowing into rivers, lakes, streams, and back to the tap.

“I think it’s important to understand that everything we do, no matter how slight it may be, will have an impact on the environment,” said Dr. Edward Furlong, research scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey National Water Quality Laboratory.

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Chemicals known as Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) — including prescription and over-the-counter drugs, cosmetics, caffeine and the nicotine byproduct cotinine — are now measurable in fish, wildlife and human tissue. Industrial chemicals such as the flame retardant polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) and antimicrobials used in disinfectants are also measurable in environmental indicators.

Many of these industrial chemicals are known to disrupt the endocrine system of humans and wildlife, which affects thyroid and reproductive functions.

Despite being frequently labeled “emerging contaminants,” some of these chemicals have been present in the environment for 50 years or more. Recent technological advances now allow these chemicals to be detected and measured at much lower levels than ever before — levels so low it is difficult to determine what impact they may have.

“The concentrations in drinking water are so low that we just don’t know what they do,” said Christian Daughton, chief of Environmental Chemistry for the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development. “The analytical technology is not very good at this point to measure effects at those levels.”

Although many chemicals are being found at the parts-per-trillion to low parts-per billion ranges — levels unlikely to pose significant short-term health risks — little is known about continuous, low-level exposure.

Questions also remain about the risks associated with multiple exposures to a single water source containing several chemicals.

In 1999 and 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) tested for 95 different organic wastewater contaminants in 139 streams across 30 states. Testing focused on “high bias” sites, such as urban areas or sites susceptible to contamination from nearby livestock.

Of the 95 contaminants for which the USGS tested, 82 were detected in at least one sample. A majority of the sites contained more than five contaminants, and more than one third of the sites contained 10 or more contaminants. Some of the most common contaminants were caffeine, steroids, nonprescription drugs, antimicrobials and the insect repellant DEET.

Furlong said most wastewater treatment plants can remove many of these chemicals, but not everything.

“These compounds are ubiquitous, and there is a wide array of them present in the environment, but they are below levels causing physiologically measurable damage,” he said. “I think to be alarmist about the situation would be an inappropriate extension of the information.”

PBDE

The prevalence and distribution of the endocrine disruptor Polybrominated Diphenyl Ether (PBDE) is causing alarm, however, in the United States and internationally. Widely used as a flame retardant in consumer products such as furniture, carpet and electronic circuit boards, PBDEs have been found in women’s breast milk and aquatic organisms.

Because it binds to fatty tissue cells, PBDE is extremely resistant to physical, chemical or biological breakdown. This suggests a strong potential for PBDE to build up, or bioaccumulate, in humans and animals. Scientists disagree on how most people ingest PBDE. Some studies suggest it is inhaled at work or home when foam particles from old furniture become airborne; other studies point to frequent consumption of contaminated fish.

PBDE passes through the human placenta to a developing fetus, which can later impact a child’s learning ability, memory and hearing, according to ecologist Sandra Steingraber, distinguished visiting scholar at Ithaca College in New York. Two studies from the EPA and Sweden’s Uppsala University show high levels of PBDE can cause memory loss, brain damage and alter sex hormones in some laboratory mice.
Despite an EPA ban on two of three types of PBDEs, another Swedish study published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health in 1999 reported PBDE concentrations are doubling every three to five years in North American people and wildlife.

With such a strong tendency for bioaccumulation, PBDEs join company with the now infamous DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemical compounds previously found to accumulate in human and animal tissue.

Chemical cocktail

In 1999, the USGS worked with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to analyze the Chattahoochee watershed in Georgia. Testing for pharmaceutical chemicals in streams, treated wastewater and drinking water, the USGS found 17 of 42 chemicals on the list. Of another 47 chemicals tested — including caffeine, antimicrobials and flame-retardants — 80 percent of the chemicals turned up at least once.

With no pharmaceutical plants in the Chattahoochee watershed, the presence of pharmaceuticals suggests human excrement as the likely carrier into the water. The CDC has conducted similar studies in New Jersey and North Carolina.

“Our results have mirrored those of researchers in other parts of the country,” said Deborah Moll, an environmental health scientist with the CDC. “We’ve found similar compound levels in the parts-per-trillion range to low parts-per-billion range, and we’ve also found pharmaceuticals and [organic wastewater compounds] in very low levels in treated drinking water.”

While the concentrations of each individual chemical may not pose health concerns, Daughton said caution is needed when talking about a cocktail of chemicals that can persist in a single area.

“If each is present at a fraction of the parts-per-billion range, when you take the sum total of concentrations, the parts-per-billion total is much higher at concentrations that do have a known effect,” he said.

Because aquatic organisms are exposed to multiple chemicals simultaneously, they can be studied to determine the effects of multiple exposure.

For example, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) — a type of antidepressant — are known to impact shellfish reproduction. Trace amounts of these chemicals enter lakes and rivers through human excrement and improper disposal. Because the chemicals aren’t biodegradable or completely removed through treatment plants, fish and the wildlife that eat fish are continuously exposed to them at low levels.

John Giesy, professor of zoology at Michigan State University and a member of the National Food Safety and Toxicology Center, studies the environmental effects of emerging contaminants. Most recently, Giesy has been studying perfluorooctane sulfonates (PFOS), which are used to coat things like carpet, microchips and even microwave popcorn bags.

PFOS have the ability to repel oil, grease and water and until 2001, McDonalds restaurants applied PFOS to sandwich wrappers to keep grease off customers’ hands.
One way PFOS enter the environment is through carpet, having been applied as a stain repellant. Some of the chemical eventually wears off, starting indoors and migrating into the outside air.

Much is unknown about the toxicity and bioaccumulation potential of PFOS. But toxicity studies of other perfluorooctanes on animals found they disrupt cell-to-cell communication, affect reproduction and development, and potentially cause cancer. In worldwide samples, Giesy and others found PFOS in cormorants from Lakes Huron and Superior, bald eagle plasma throughout the Midwest, and Alaskan polar bear blood and liver samples.

PFOS travel very easily, vaporizing in warmer areas and moving to condense in cooler areas, similar to the pesticide toxaphene. A substitute for DDT, toxaphene was used extensively in cotton producing states in the 1960s and 1970s, but was phased out by 1986. Now, University of Indiana scientists have found airborne concentrations of toxaphene in the southeast were apparently carried north, to the Midwest. Samples from Lakes Michigan and Superior revealed higher-than-expected concentrations of toxaphene, considering its limited use in the region.

The same Indiana University researchers found evidence of other vaporized chemicals carried long distances by wind. Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) were found in sediment samples taken from Siskiwit Lake, on remote Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior.

Similar chemically to other dioxins, the EPA describes PCDDs as “trace level unintentional by-products of most forms of combustion and several industrial chemical processes.” PCDDs have been found to adversely affect reproduction, development and endocrine functions in fish and birds, and even cause death.

Many miles from any direct pollution source, Siskiwit Lake sits isolated within Isle Royale National Park. Relatively low input to Siskiwit Lake from shorelines or rivers means rain and snow are the main sources for airborne concentrations of PCDDs.

Pursuing purity

As the research moves from detection and sampling to pollution prevention, much work remains.

The USGS will continue to expand its detection studies, examining landfills and other areas that affect water quality. Because it is unlikely that a single chemical would be isolated in a given sample, USGS’s Furlong said future efforts to improve water treatment would focus on how these chemicals behave as a mixture.

“Our focus has been to work to improve the wastewater treatment processes, and our data helps set the context to scrub out these chemicals in the treatment process,” he said.

As wastewater treatment technology improves, the need for large facilities could diminish.

The EPA’s Daughton said that despite a public image problem, on-site sewage treatment could be the wave of the future. Technology already exists for “groundwater replenishment systems,” less delicately known as “toilet-to-tap” technology. Orange County, California is currently constructing the largest such system. Treated wastewater normally dumped into the ocean will be redirected through filters into a groundwater basin for future use. But Daughton admits that there is an “emotional barrier” created when emphasizing the link between drinking water and waste.

“Do you want to drink your sewage or not?” he said. “Most people don’t, but it may come to the point where we don’t have a choice.”

Awareness that humans directly add harmful chemicals into the environment is a starting point. Deborah Moll of the CDC said that while scientists study the extent of pharmaceutical pollution, a little common sense is needed.

“There are things we can do as consumers to decrease the potential threat, such as not dumping expired or unused prescriptions down the toilet,” she said. “If people are encouraged to be careful in their disposal,” she said, “we can work to control the amounts in the environment.”