Clean Water Action

Drugs In Drinking Water:

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Watch NJEF Campaign Director David Pringle Testify

Pringle discusses the rising levels of human and veterinary pharmaceuticals in the nation’s drinking water, the need for national standards, and one state pilot project that is attempting to deal with the problem at the U.S. Senate hearing.

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Leading Water Advocate Urges Congress To Act Prevention, Treatment, Monitoring Urged In Senate Testimony

Washington, DC--A leading advocate for drinking water safety testified on April 15, 2008 before a U.S. Senate Committee said Congress should take immediate steps to protect consumers' health in the wake of an Associated Press investigation that found that the drinking water of millions of Americans may be contaminated by a wide range of pharmaceuticals.

David Pringle, testifying before a Senate subcommittee on water quality Tuesday, said the government should take immediate steps toward preventing pollution from drugs in drinking water in order to protect the health of Americans as well as a "modern Noah's Ark" of other animals exposed to pharmaceuticals.

"Common sense dictates it's not a good idea to drink somebody else's medicine," said Pringle, a New Jersey water specialist representing Clean Water Action and its affiliate, the New Jersey Environmental Federation. "We know enough to take timely action now. Attention should be focused on pollution prevention and on ensuring affordable, healthy drinking water, a task which is well within our capacity."

Pringle, the New Jersey group's campaign director, serves as the Speaker of the New Jersey State Assembly's public health appointee to the Drinking Water Quality Institute and is chair of its Health Subcommittee. He testified Tuesday before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Subcommittee on Transportation Safety, Infrastructure Security and Water Quality hearing on "Pharmaceuticals in the Nation's Water: Assessing Potential Risks and Actions to Address the Issue".

The hearing came in the wake of an Associated Press March investigation that reported a vast array of pharmaceuticals including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans.

In his testimony Tuesday, Pringle called on the committee to:

• Restore $10 million in proposed budget cuts by the Bush administration that fund water quality monitoring, analysis and research under the United States Geological Service's National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) and to restore smaller but important cuts to USGS' toxics' assessment and other programs that are critical in gauging the breath and depth of this problem;
• Support additional research and developing standards to improve drinking water and wastewater treatment technology aimed at removing drugs from industrial, agriculture and other sources with priority placed on preventing contamination;
• Pollution prevention and toxic use reduction must be vigorously pursued, especially in the reformulation of human and veterinary medicines at each stage of their life cycle.
• Encourage programs to discourage the flushing of unused drugs into wastewater systems;
• Engage the National Academy of Sciences in furthering its review of the science of occurrence and health and ecological effects of pharmaceuticals;
• Target the cleanup of waters with evidence of deformed fish and other ecological impacts potentially due to pharmaceutical pollution.

The primary sources of the drug contamination of drinking water, said Pringle, include human waste, industrial discharges, disposal of unused drugs, manure used as fertilizer and agricultural runoff. Besides impacting humans, Pringle said studies suggest a host of species can be impacted, most notably the feminization of male fish living downstream from wastewater treatment plants.

Pringle noted that bottled water is not a solution because it is less regulated than tap water, is more expensive and is drawn largely from the same sources as public tap water supplies.

The New Jersey Environmental Federation (NJEF), the NJ chapter of Clean Water Action, has been a statewide leader on drinking water, environmental justice, public health, safe energy and other issues for over 20 years. NJEF has over 100,000 individual members and 100 member groups. For more information, visit www.cleanwateraction.org/njef

Clean Water Action is the nation's leading grassroots environmental campaign organization, with more than 1 million members nationwide. Clean Water Action has been a leader in protecting America's waters, the public health and empowering people to take charge of their environmental future. www.cleanwateraction.org

For more information on this campaign, contact jvickers@cleanwater.org