This
was learned when fish downstream were going psycho. Prozac was blamed, and
this was traced to sewage fed by drinking water sources. The fish got it from
people on Prozac when they flushed the toilet after elimination.
You
don't need a prescription to join Prozac Nation -- all you need to do is turn
on your faucet.
Odds
are, your drinking water is contaminated with Prozac and dozens of other drugs.
And if you think those low-but-steady levels of exposure are too small to do any
damage, I've got a study on fish you've just got to see.
Fish
exposed to the very same kind of Prozac that's likely in your own tap water right
now become anxious and aggressive, even stalking and killing other fish.
Males
lose interest in reproducing, and females stop laying eggs, according to the report
in Scientific American.
Now,
you're not a fish -- but you do have something in common with them: In both fish
and humans, antidepressants (and similar drugs) can accumulate in the brain, which
is why even pharmaceutical doses can take weeks or months to kick in.
Don't
ask what years and years of low-level accumulation can do to a human -- it's never
been closely studied. But if you look at the rising number of crazies out there
and declining birth rates, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it had a similar
effect on us.
There's
just one way to protect yourself and your family short of avoiding water, and
that's to use a filter -- and I don't mean a cheap-o supermarket variety.
To
get rid of the drugs (both prescription and street), hormones, rocket fuel, and
other contaminants that are routinely turning up in U.S. drinking water, you need
to break out the big gun: a reverse osmosis water filter.
You
can find one in any decent home improvement store for a few hundred bucks. Just
be sure to install it where the water enters your home to protect every tap and
faucet.
And
to learn how you can get even more details on what's REALLY in your water, be
sure to read my special report: Don't Drink the Water.
William
Campbell Douglass II, M.D. >
SCIENTIFIC
AMERICAN
June
12, 2013
When
fish swim in waters tainted with antidepressant drugs, they become anxious, anti-social
and sometimes even homicidal.
New research has found that the pharmaceuticals, which are frequently showing
up in U.S. streams, can alter genes responsible for building fish brains and controlling
their behavior.
Antidepressants are the most commonly prescribed medications in the United States;
about 250
million prescriptions are filled every year. And they also are the highest-documented
drugs contaminating waterways, which has experts worried about fish. Traces of
the drugs typically get into streams when people excrete them, then sewage treatment
plants discharge the effluent.
Exposure to fluoxetine, known by the trade name Prozac, had a bizarre effect on
male fathead minnows, according to new,
unpublished research by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Male minnows exposed to a small dose of the drug in laboratories ignored females.
They spent more time under a tile, so their reproduction
decreased and they took more time capturing prey, according to Rebecca Klaper,
a professor of freshwater sciences who spoke about her findings at a Society of
Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry conference last fall. Klaper said the doses
of Prozac added to the fishes water were "very
low concentrations," 1 part per billion, which is found in some wastewater
discharged into streams.
When the dose was increased, but still at levels found in some wastewater, females
produced fewer eggs and males became aggressive, killing females in some cases,
Klaper said at the conference.
The
drugs seem to cause these behavioral problems by scrambling how genes in the fish
brains are expressed, or turned on and off. The minnows were exposed when they
were a couple of months old and still developing.
There appeared to be architectural changes to the young minnows' brains, Klaper
said at the toxicology conference. Growth of the axons, which are long nerve fibers
that transmit information to the body, was disrupted.
The new findings build on Klaper previous
research, which tested minnows with the gene changes to see how well they
avoided predators. They swam longer distances and made more directional changes,
which suggests that the drugs induced anxiety.
The drugs used in the study were among the most common in sewage: Prozac, Effexor
and Tegretol. The researchers tested each drug alone and in combination.
"At high doses we expect brain changes," Klaper said. "But we saw
the gene expression changes and then behavioral changes at doses that we consider
environmentally relevant."
However, there is too little evidence to know whether pharmaceuticals are having
any impacts on fish populations in the wild, said Bryan Brooks, an environmental
science professor at Baylor University who has extensively studied pharmaceuticals
in streams and fish.
Any changes in reproduction, eating and avoiding prey can have devastating impacts
for fish populations, Klaper said.
The most vulnerable fish populations are those downstream of sewage treatment
plants, where prescription drugs consistently show up in higher levels than in
other waterways. It's only within the past decade that technology has allowed
plants to test for the chemicals in their wastewater and in waters downstream,
though most still don't, said Steve Carr, supervisor of the chemistry research
group at the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts.
One of the antidepressants tested in the fish – Tegretol comes into the
treatment plants and goes out at near constant levels, said Eric Nelson, a senior
chemist with the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts.
That means the county’s treatment technology does not seem to have any effect
on the drug. It comes in and leaves in a very tight range, about 150 to 400 parts
per trillion, Nelson said.
Nelson said the two other drugs tested on the fish Prozac and Effexor are
discharged in effluent at even lower levels: between about 20 and 30 parts per
trillion. In comparison, the levels that altered behavior of the lab fish were
50 times higher.
When monitoring an Iowa and a Colorado stream, the U.S. Geological Survey found
most drugs at levels similar to Los Angeles County's. However, these low levels
could still find their way into fish brains, according to their 2010
study.
Researchers found elevated levels of pharmaceuticals in the stream water two to
six miles from the sewage treatment plants.
But the chemicals at the highest levels in the water were not the ones most prevalent
in the fish brains.
"The fish downstream of the wastewater treatment had elevated concentrations
of two antidepressants Zoloft and Prozac," said Edward Furlong, a research
chemist at the U.S. Geological Survey based in Boulder, Colo. "And these
were relatively low in water compared to others."
Even if the levels released into streams seem low, they are constant, which is
problematic, Brooks said.
"The drugs may not be classically persistent like PCBs,"; Brooks said.
"But they're pseudo-persistent. The [continuous] exposure of organisms in
a stream is equivalent to a chemical that is persistent."
Some drugs bioaccumulate, or build up, in rainbow trout, according to Brooks’
research. Also, rainbow trout exposed to sewage effluent have pharmaceuticals
in their blood at levels as high as those that affect the brains of people, according
to research in Sweden.
Brooks said the likelihood of bioaccumulation for pharmaceuticals is high. "People
have to take these drugs for weeks before they start having effects. They slowly
bioaccumulate in your system," which suggests bioaccumulation potential in
fish, too, Brooks said.
Changes to the brain can affect all kinds of things in fish, Klaper said. And
since humans have a similar brain gene structure, the findings raise questions
about whether traces of these drugs in drinking water might harm human health.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers pharmaceuticals an "emerging
concern," and has concluded that the chemicals may pose risks to wildlife
and humans. There are currently no federal regulations of the compounds in waste
or drinking water. However, 12 pharmaceuticals are currently on the EPA’s
Contaminant Candidate List, which are chemicals that may require regulation
under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Studies have consistently found prescription drugs in drinking water at parts-per-trillion
levels. U.S. Geological
Survey scientists sampled 74 waterways used for drinking water in 25 states
in 2008 and found 53 had one or more of the three dozen pharmaceuticals they were
testing for in their water. Forty percent of the pharmaceuticals were found at
one or more of the sites.
Fifty-four active pharmaceutical ingredients and 10 metabolites have been detected
in treated U.S. drinking water, according to a 2010
EPA review.
But health officials say the levels found in some drinking water
are too low to cause harm.
According to a 2012
World Health Organization report, the "trace quantities of pharmaceuticals
in drinking water are very unlikely to pose risks to human health." The report
said that the amount found in drinking water is usually 1,000 times lower than
doses expected to have an effect on a person.
But Klaper said that in light of the gene changes in fish brains, officials may
need to rethink what is considered safe.
"Fish do not metabolize drugs like we do," Klaper said. "Even if
environmental doses aren't thought to be much for a human, fish could still have
significant accumulation, and, it appears, changes in their brain’s gene
expression."
THIS
IS WHY YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND THESE FACTS-- YOU HAVE BEEN DUMBED DOWN
