VIRGINIA BEACH
Sewage plants across Hampton Roads filter many pollutants: slaughterhouse wastes, toxic chemicals, human feces. But drugs and medicines – from cocaine to cough syrup – run through the treatment plants and enter local waterways almost untouched.
“Our plants are not designed to remove those things,” said Norman LeBlanc, director of water quality for the Hampton Roads Sanitation District, which treats 230 million gallons of wastewater a day in 17 cities and counties.
Concerned by growing scientific and public-health anxieties over such unchecked discharges, regional officials are going on a public-education offensive.
They hope the information, to be distributed in brochures, online and through media outlets, will help keep medicines out of the sewage stream – and, in turn, out of local creeks, rivers and the Chesapeake Bay.
HRSD will use Earth Day celebrations next month to alert residents to the potential problems of unwanted medicines, and to ask that they try a safer disposal alternative. The agency calls its campaign “My Flush Counts.”
Instead of flushing unused medicines down a toilet or pouring them down a drain, officials are asking residents to wrap up old bottles and pill vials and throw them in the trash – preferably with old cat litter or something equally as nasty to discourage human reuse.
This way, waste officials say, the medicines are more likely to be incinerated at a garbage-fueled power plant in Portsmouth run by SPSA, the regional garbage authority.
“Incineration is probably the best option we have at this point,” said Richard Cheliras, director of waste-to-energy for the Southeastern Public Service Authority. He noted that police officers often get rid of seized drugs by burning them in incinerators.
The two regional waste agencies are joining hands to deal with this new contamination threat, known as “pharm water” or PPCPs, short for pharmaceuticals and personal care products.
Officials had hoped to do more than public outreach, such as collecting unused drugs at special sites for their destruction, much the same way they collect and dispose of used paint, solvents and other household hazardous wastes.
But such a “take-back” program would be difficult to organize, officials said, given federal laws that bar anyone but police from accepting many such drugs.
“Physically, we could do it, no problem,” Cheliras said. “But legally, we cannot.”
Scientists suspect that trace materials might be harming aquatic life and altering ecosystems, and may represent another source of manmade chemicals manipulating the natural food chain.
Some scientists suggest that unused medicines and their components might be changing the sex of some fish species – turning males into females. Sex change has been documented in sampled fish from the Potomac River.
“It may be a tip-of-the-iceberg thing,” said Rob Hale, an environmental chemist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, who has studied the phenomenon.
“We’ve always been told as a society not to go into a medicine cabinet, that it’s a dangerous place to mess around,” Hale added. “Yet we haven’t thought twice about the consequences of dumping that same cabinet into the natural environment.”
Scientists with HRSD, the regional sewage authority, say that while medicines might seem like an environmental problem intuitively, little research has documented a big risk.
HRSD does not monitor its treated wastewater for medicines or drugs, citing high costs and questionable reliability.
“To even say it’s a problem is a bit of a stretch,” said Jim Pletl, HRSD’s chief of technical services. “The impacts of this, if any, are so subtle, it’s hard to link with an exact cause.”
Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com
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Chesapeake Water & Tasty "pot"s Of Joe
The water in South Norfolk, from what I understand, comes from Norfolk. While I've never gotten a "buzz" from drinking it, I find it quite potable, & it makes a tasty pot of joe. For a reason I can't explain in 750 characters, & not wishing to violate posting guidelines, or possibly irritate sensitive readers, I am compelled to confess that I flushed some cooked "oodles of noodles" yesterday. I hope I can safely go in peace , with my "sins" forgiven.
Kitty litter
I don't own a cat and have flushed my share of meds not used for one reason or another, and I can see how this can become an even bigger problem if it continues to go unchecked. I think it's very little to ask that we discontinue flushing. I've always thrown the bottles in the trash after pealing off the info, and I don't have a problem either putting the pills in the trash or tossing them in a cast iron pot I have in my yard and burning them, butI do refuse to get a cat.
and you still can't drink Chesapeake water...
This article is lame.
How do you spell relief
W A T E R
jamiegumm
A few news outlets researched the AP's story about "pharmaceuticals in our drinking water" and found the title "misleading" (I put it in quotes because it was irresponsible journalism). The drugs were found in the water SUPPLY (i.e. reservoirs) after filtration and processing the water from our taps (drinking water) is clean.
In one story, it was stated that Norfolk, who supplies water to most of the Southside has the fourth best water in the US...
Hahahaha!
This isn't any threat. If drug levels are so worrisome why am I not getting high off drinking water? And at the rates we're charged I would think that's the LEAST water companies can do is get us high so we can tolerate the bill.
Step in the right direction...
Admittedly, I've always tossed unused meds and vitamins in the toilet bowl like my college roommate, who was freaked that someone garbage picker would use them; not so much that they'd get sick, but that the meds would be traced to him for a lawsuit!
So for 20-odd years, I've been part of the problem. Biologists are wondering why fish, toads, and other animals are having sex changes they didn't order; you've got to consider our impact on the environment. And in the case of consumer chemicals including prescriptions, we're being made aware this is a world-wide situation with who-knows what implications.
It's going to clean up the Chesapeake, but I'm no longer dumping any extras in my hopper.
The last couple of lines say everything that needs to be said.
The amounts are so minute, I don't understand why it's news. Oh yeah, it's a slow news day. Thank Goodness for Elliot Spritzer! Tomorrow we won't have to read how seagull droppings are polluting the beaches!
So now that the "global warming" thing is falling apart.
Obviously the scientist need something other than "global warming" to get some taxpayer funded grants to study. This is so obviously bogus that is reeks of funny. Do you have any idea how diluted a case of pills would be by time it got to the sewage plant? This explains why SPSA and HRSD are such poorly run and fiscally irresponsibly run tax holes. Can SPSA and HRSD should really concentrate on cleaning their houses up and become more efficient in what their main function is suppose to be. No wonder they eat up so much of our tax dollars and come back claiming to need more every year. It's time to fire some directors, deep six some board members and get a grip on the out of control spending of these public organizations.
A fine line...
At some point we, as a people, have to find the balance between modernization and eco-friendly. On one side you have the industrialization-Nazis that see nothing but progress and turn their backs to Mother Nature, tearing down every tree in their way. On the other you have the ignorant hippies that feel nothing should get in the way of nature and her plan. I love nature, clean air and green trees but I also love the fact that the average life span has doubled in the past hundred years. Sure there are very easy things that can be done to help nature thrive; recycle, turn your heat/AC down, use renewable resources, buy green, find alternate fuel source. But this does not mean we have to give up what modernization has given us to survive longer, healthier lives. Until someone proves this is harming us more then what causes it helps us who cares. Just enjoy the extra 30 years of life all this has provided you.
EcoWarrior
What's your point. Most of us are aware of your non-enciteful psot. For all the "ills" chemistry has created there are tens of thousands of solutions and necessary items it has created.
It All Goes Down the Drain, or Runs Off in the Rain
Come one everyone, where did you think that mess goes-evaporates to the mists of time? This ball of dirt is built on cycles. Everything returns to its root. Endorcine disrupters and other PCPPs are in everything we use in our daily lives. Industrial animal feed is laden with chemicals to ensure rapid weight gain, reduce parasites, and mess with nature's plan of rapid growth for easy commercial gain. Soaps, lotions, other potions contain anti-bacterials, plasticizers, smoothers, smells and gels, all derived from chemical sources, all for the vain and beautiful. What flushes down the drain goes back to the sea, by the rivers or the Bay. Poop from animal feed lots and chicken houses is spread on land as free fertilizer, much to run off in storms back to the flows of life. Farm runoff gets no treatment at all. HRSD would have to pass wastewater through carbon filters or membrane technology to clean it all. Chronic toxicity results from long term exposure to low concentrations, and the probable combinations remain unknown and potentially dangerous.