Green Options

The energy giant BP and Martek Biosciences, a Maryland based company that uses micro algae to produce oil-based nutritional and dietary supplements, signed a Joint Development Agreement (JDA) earlier this month to produce microbial oils for biofuels applications.

Research from the University of Gothenburg has revealed that 31% of antibiotics sold in Sweden contain drugs manufactured near Hyderabad, India, where porous wastewater treatment has led to widespread contamination.

The questionable water treatment facilities were found to release levels of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin which were 5 times higher than the daily consumption of the entire country of Sweden. At levels that high, there is an increased risk of breeding “super germs”, drug-resistant bacteria which have evolved an immunity to antibiotics.

Researchers have discovered that the huge pharmaceutical industry in India has led to severely contaminated wastewater downstream from drug factories. How severe? The water contains 150 times the highest levels of contamination found in the United States.

More than 200 million prescriptions for antidepressants are taken each year in the US, many of which end up in our ground water through patients’ excrement or from the pills being flushed down the toilet. According to Discover Magazine:

The concentrations of antidepressants in the water—billionths of a gram per liter—aren’t enough to affect larger species, but they are enough to make small fish

[...]

There’s a lot of controversy right now about over-medicating children for both medical and mental/emotional reasons. Before you let your doctor prescribe any medications for your child, please do some research. Ask questions. Lots of them.

I’m not a doctor or a psychiatrist, but as a parent, I am very protective about my kids. Messing with their brain chemistry or masking symptoms while the root causes go untreated seems like it will come back to haunt us later.

First, a clip from the new movie GenerationRX:

For decades, scores of doctors, government officials, journalists, and others have extolled the benefits of psychiatric medicines for children. GENERATION RX presents “the rest of the story” and unveils how this era of unprecedented change in Western culture really occurred - and what price has been paid by our society.

What started out as a innovative, new program to keep old medications out of the waste stream in LaCrosse County, Wisconsin, has grown to become an award-winning initiative now used by more than 30 counties in three states.

Special waste manager Jeff Gloyd created the program in which LaCrosse County began collecting old over-the-counter drugs and prescription medications to keep them out of the regular waste stream. Pharmaceuticals thrown out that way have increasingly seeped into natural waterways and, eventually, human drinking water supplies, raising concerns about environmental and health dangers.

I was standing at the refrigerator door, pouring filtered water into my son’s sippy cup when a terrifying news story from a few weeks ago flashed through my head: “Pharmaceuticals Found in Tap Water” the headlines had screamed. According to the AP report: trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer were found. And a study released by Medco Health Solutions Inc. reported that HALF of all insured Americans were on medications for chronic health conditions. Are you kidding me?

That’s an awful lot of chemically-laced poop and pee (as we say in my house) being flushed each year. For some reason when the story broke it didn’t hit home to me. I don’t live in a metropolis, but as I stood there with that sippy cup I realized I don’t want my son drinking birth control pills, no matter what the dosage level. And what if he had been exposed to this when he was an infant?

A new study found traces of common drugs including: an anti-seizure medication, a mood stabilizer for treating bipolar disorders, ibuprofen and naproxen, and an antibiotic typically given to cattle in the water of 24 out of 28 US metropolitan areas.

Most wastewater and drinking water treatment systems are incapable of removing those drugs. Some scientists said there is probably little human health risk; others fear chronic exposure could alter immune responses or interfere with adolescents’ developing [...]