AU Water Resource Center Committee Member, Jim Hairston, responds to the recent stir over pharmaceutical residues in drinking water in this March 14th post for Extension Daily by Jim Lancuster:
As far as threats go, Jim Hairston doesn’t get it – this growing fear, prompted by a series of recent news articles, that U.S. drinking water contains minute traces of pharmaceuticals, such as antibiotics, sex hormones and anti-anxiety drugs.
Based on these findings, some political leaders, watchdogs and scientists are urging a full-scale public accounting. But Hairston says they would be better off taking a get-real pill, if one were available.
That’s not to imply that Hairston, the Alabama Cooperative Extension System’s water coordinator and Auburn University professor of agronomy is unaware or insensitive to the issue. Yes, he’s the first to concede that tiny amounts of these pharmaceuticals are in the nation’s drinking water supply. But so are a host of other residues – some natural, some manmade.
The question is whether they pose any serious threat to American consumers. Hairston is convinced the answer is no.
“The sorts of people the media should be talking to are the scientists and others who understand scientific research, how it’s conducted and how it relates to chemicals,” Hairston says.
He says the same holds true for environmentalists and similar individuals who sow fears without ever bothering to consult the people who best understand the threats associated with these pharmaceutical residues – again, scientists.
Indeed, as Hairston describes it, chemical exposure is something that every human being on this planet simply can’t avoid.
“We live a world of chemicals,” he says. “We’re exposed to them everywhere, breathing them, drinking them, and even wearing clothing that has been dyed with them.”
Even so, Hairston says this hasn’t stopped some people from depicting trace elements of these chemicals in drinking water as a major environmental menace. He says years of scientific research have shown that minute traces of most of these chemicals pose no threat to humans.
“They conveniently fail to mention the dose-response relationship and that those trace elements are showing up well below the levels considered unsafe,” Hairston says.
Still, he readily concedes that much of this fear is unavoidable – a fear bred by the Internet, which has enabled growing numbers of Americans to obtain unfiltered and often unreliable information. In the case of drinking water, this fear is compounded by reluctance among water treatment authorities to disclose information about trace chemical elements in drinking water, fearing that this will create even more groundless concerns.
Ironically, Hairston says, the United States boasts the safest drinking water supply in the world. Even the small amounts of manmade chemicals in water reflect the dramatic strides against common disease prevalent throughout the 19th and much of the 20th centuries, he says.
“We probably have a lot less water pollution today than ever before, though with a greater incidence of chemicals in the water generated by humans,” he says. “But these, much like treated water, have helped us extend our lives and to eliminate many of the things we fear most.”
Currently, most drinking-water treatment plants in the United States do not screen for pharmaceuticals, according to a recent report by Associated Press – a fact that has prompted some political leaders and environmental and health watchdog groups to stress the need for more stringent regulations for sewage and waste-water treatment.
For his part, Hairston says he’ll hold of making similar demands unless science concludes that trace elements of these pharmaceuticals prove detrimental to human health.
“I trust science, and I trust the scientists,” he says. “I trust the fact that we have the best system for protecting public drinking water than any country in the world.”
Mr. Hairston’s attitude is very common in the world now responsible for our environment. The principle seems to be; when faced with a problem, simply down play the impact and don’t admit that there is a possibility that mistakes were made.
Everybody involved in water pollution heralds the impact the Clean Water Act had, but the fact is that this second largest federally funded public works program failed because EPA (as the rest of the world) is using an essential water pollution test incorrectly and as one of the consequences ignores all the pollution caused by nitrogenous (urine and protein) waste. In addition it is not even possible to evaluate the real performance of a sewage treatment plant and impossible to determine what the waste loading on the effluent receiving water body is.
In 1984 EPA acknowledged the problems, but in stead of correcting this test, EPA allowed another test and thereby officially ignored all the pollution caused by nitrogenous waste, which besides, like fecal waste, exerts and oxygen demand also in all its forms, is a fertilizer for algae and aquatic plant growth., causing among them the dead zones and red tides.
So, why being concerned with drugs in our drinking water, while we still use our open waters as urinals?
I agree completely with Dr. Hairston’s view that our water supply is among the safest in the world, that sound science is the antidote for fear, and that the extremely low levels of detected pharmaceuticals are well below thresholds set for medical efficacy.
However, ongoing studies (including at the American Water Works Association Research Foundation) have not yet concluded that a long term low dose consumption of this pharmaceutical cocktail is without harm. If anything preliminary peer-reviewed animal and ex vivo research has tended to raise, not lower concern. While there is today no justification for public fear, the responsible scientist (and an increasingly sophisticated public) knows that the absence of proof of harm is not proof of safety.
Pharmaceuticals differ from other chemicals in the environment: by design, they target human cells and are highly bioactive. To suggest that their effect is equivalent to ambient chemicals is misleading at best, and such statements do not enhance the credibility of the scientific community.
Perhaps the writer took license characterizing Dr. Hairiston as “unconcerned”, but that term implies a decidedly non-scientific approach to the subject. The scientific fact is that we are conducting a very large and uncontrolled experiment, and we do not yet have data regarding what effects, if any, will result from daily human ingestion of multiple low dose pharmaceuticals over long time scales.
As responsible scientists, we must scrupulously avoid giving the impression that potential risks are being discounted or ignored out of hand. Our water is safe today precisely because contaminants were identified, studied and addressed, not dismissed in advance of data as harmless. That process is the basis for public confidence and trust.