The State of the Nation’s Lakes

  • The EPA found that 44% of the nation's lakes ranked fair or poor. (Photo by Randolph Femmer, courtesy of the National Biological Information Infrastructure)

The Environmental Protection Agency
has released its first comprehensive
survey of the nation’s lakes. Samara Freemark tells us what
the study turned up:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency
has released its first comprehensive
survey of the nation’s lakes. Samara Freemark tells us what
the study turned up:

More than half the nation’s lakes are in good condition. That’s according to a nationwide survey just released by the EPA. But the agency found that 44% of lakes ranked only fair or poor.

The survey identified two major problems facing lakes. First, many of them are surrounded by development. And that can mean dirt and polluted water running off into the lakes.

And second, many lakes contained high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, which can lead to harmful algae blooms.

Susan Holdsworth is with the EPA. She says those findings were concerning.

“These stressors are both widespread and pose a significant threat to the condition of our nation’s lakes.”

Holdsworth says the EPA will use the data to assess how well government programs are doing at protecting lakes. The results will also help set future EPA priorities.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Air Pollution at Schools

  • In August, the EPA put air samplers outside of 63 schools in 22 states. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

The US Environmental Protection Agency
is wrapping up a 60-day initiative
looking at toxic air pollution around
schools. They’re looking to gauge the
health effects linked to pollution exposure.
Many of the schools were chosen based
on how close they were to heavy industry.
Gigi Douban reports:

Transcript

The US Environmental Protection Agency
is wrapping up a 60-day initiative
looking at toxic air pollution around
schools. They’re looking to gauge the
health effects linked to pollution exposure.
Many of the schools were chosen based
on how close they were to heavy industry.
Gigi Douban reports:

It’s pretty much a given: put a school near heavy industry and an interstate, and those
kids are going to be breathing polluted air. What the EPA didn’t know was just how
polluted it would be. So the agency in August put air samplers outside of 63 schools in
22 states. One of those schools is Lewis Elementary in Birmingham, Alabama.

(sound of calling out names for carpool)

As he does every day, Richard Gooden is waiting in the carpool line to pick up his
granddaughter, who attends pre-K at the school. Not far away, near the basketball
court, there’s an air pollution monitor. Gooden, for one, was glad it was there. Living
up the hill from the American Cast Iron Pipe Company, he’s seen thick layers of dust
settle on his windows.

“I got a little white house with vinyl siding, and you can’t tell there’s vinyl hardly
because of the dirt coming from that pipe shop.”

Gooden has lived in that house for 43 years. His granddaughter spends most days
there, and he worries about her health and his own.

“I had a triple heart bypass a while back. I’m just wondering is that air completely
clean to breathe.”

The EPA plans to have some answers. In Birmingham, the Jefferson County Health
Department is collecting the data on the EPA’s behalf. Corey Masuca is the county’s
senior air pollution control engineer. He says they’re screening for about 100 different
pollutants.

“We looked for them, then, we found them.”

So far, he says, only three of those – benzene, manganese and acrolein – were found
at high levels. Most concerning, acrolein levels were more than 100 times higher than
what the government considers safe. Where does it come from?

“Pretty much any type of combustion source – whether it’s combustion coal, or
fuels from a plant, or fuel from a car. It even emanates from cigarette smoke, so it’s
fairly ubiquitous.”

But ubiquitous doesn’t mean safe. In fact, excess exposure to manganese can cause
brain damage. Acrolein can damage the lungs, and benzene is a carcinogen.

Masuca says the findings aren’t a major cause for concern. But Janice Nolen,
Assistant Vice-President for Policy and Advocacy at the American Lung Association,
disagrees.

“The fact that it’s in lots of places doesn’t mean it is not a big problem. It means
that we have a lot of things that we need to clean up.”

And when it comes to schools, she says, industrial pollution isn’t the whole picture.
Diesel buses drive right up to the school doors every day. Inside schools, poor
ventilation and even things like some glues can lead to health problems.

Yet there are definite links between these air toxins and heavy industry. So Masuca, of
the Jefferson County Health Department, says just knowing what’s out there is a huge
first step. Next they’ll come up with ways to reduce exposure. Things like having kids
stay indoors during recess on days when pollution levels seem to be highest.

Janice Nolen of the American Lung Association hopes monitoring will lead to stricter
controls on nearby industry. And maybe spark even a little bit of self-regulation.

“Letting people know about what’s in the air often raises public awareness and
causes industry to rethink what they’re doing and come up with less toxic ways to
produce their products.”

She says this research can galvanize communities into action. Most of the parents I
spoke with at Lewis Elementary didn’t know a thing about the EPA’s monitoring
program. But perhaps once the EPA gathers long-term data on schools across the
country in the months to come, that will change.

For The Environment Report, I’m Gigi Douban.

Related Links

Preview: The Trail of Dioxin and Dow

  • A Dow Chemical sign on the Tittabawassee River stating 'Enter At Your Own Risk' (Photo by Vincent Duffy)

If you learned your town was polluted
with toxic waste, you’d just want to
get it cleaned up. That’s not how things
have worked out with dioxin contamination
in central Michigan. Dioxin’s been a problem
for at least 30 years, but the Dow Chemical
Company, the federal government, and
the state of Michigan are just now hashing
out final cleanup plans. We had Shawn
Allee tour the area to see the
extent of the problem and what’s at stake
for the rest of us:

Transcript

If you learned your town was polluted
with toxic waste, you’d just want to
get it cleaned up. That’s not how things
have worked out with dioxin contamination
in central Michigan. Dioxin’s been a problem
for at least 30 years, but the Dow Chemical
Company, the federal government, and
the state of Michigan are just now hashing
out final cleanup plans. We had Shawn
Allee tour the area to see the
extent of the problem and what’s at stake
for the rest of us:

I wanted to begin my tour with interviews at Dow’s chemical plant in Midland. That’s where dioxin and related compounds were created: the dioxins were by-products of chemical manufacturing.

After a month of calls and emails to Dow, a spokeswoman said the company was interested in talking about the future – not the past. But the past is the reason there’s a problem now.

So, I start my tour a bit downstream.

Michelle Hurd Riddick picks me up near the plant. She’s with The Lone Tree Council, a Michigan environmental group. We follow the Tittabawassee River and the path dioxins took over time.

“This is Freeland Festival Park. Freeland is kind of like a bedroom community of Midland.“

Hurd Riddick says fishing is a huge past time in Michigan – but dioxin’s made it complicated.

Allee: “There’s a fish-advisory sign right there.“

Riddick: “Right. So, they’re telling you to not eat the fish.“

Actually, the signs tell you which fish to avoid, and how much to eat, or not. The US Environmental Protection agency worries dioxin causes cancer and diseases that affect immune, reproductive, and developmental systems.

“Pregnant women shouldn’t eat any, children under a certain age should only eat it once a month.“

Fish advisories cropped up in 1978. That’s after Dow warned Michigan and the federal government about dioxin in the Tittabawassee River. While the plant’s dioxin pollution is well below federal limits, the old dioxins are still around, and they’re not just in the river.

Allee: “Where we coming up here?“

Riddick: “This is Imerman Park, it’s on the Tittabawassee, too, and it’s very frequently flooded.“

Flood waters leave behind contaminated silt. Dioxin’s been found in the soil of yards and in parks like this. One worry is that kids would get exposed by getting dirt in their mouths.

Riddick: “Those are the hand washing sinks. They put the sinks there to use the hand-washing sink to wash their hands as a way to mitigate their exposure.“

Allee: “There’s the sign – contamination advisory: avoid contact with soil and river sediment. Please use soap and water to wash off soil and sediment.“

Other parks and some yards had soil scraped and removed. Dow cleaned up several dioxin hot-spots in recent years. Michigan and the US EPA want more of a top-to-bottom effort. That might include a sweep of fifty miles of river and part of the Great Lakes.

Riddick: “This is the Saginaw Bay of Lake Huron. As a child, I came up here a lot. I’m sure someplace I have a picture of me near these trees.“

Riddick’s middle-aged now. The dioxin was in rivers and Lake Huron before she was born. No one knew that far back. But residents did learn about the problem thirty years ago. Today Dow, the US EPA and Michigan are still debating a final solution.

“We’ve had many, many starts. If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say this is how we’re going to achieve this cleanup, I’d be a wealthy woman.“

Hurd Riddick says the whole country should care about how this plays out.

Riddick: “People need to care about how this process because could play out in your community.“

Allee: “Maybe not dioxin but something else?“

Riddick: “You want to know that that the people your tax dollars are paying to protect you are the ones calling the shots.“

A final dioxin-clean up could take more than ten years. Michelle Hurd Riddick says she can wait that long – if it’s done right.

But she says it wouldn’t hurt if the clean-up got started now.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Milk and Manure in the Dairy State

  • Regulators in Wisconsin say, for the most part, their big dairy farms are doing a good job with manure management. They say most of their water quality problems come from smaller farms in the state - farms that are not monitored as closely. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

The dairy industry often uses images
of cows grazing in a green pasture.
But that’s not how most dairy farms
look these days. Instead of green
pastures, thousands of cows are penned
up in huge metal pole barns. The
mechanization of dairies makes for
cheaper milk at the grocery store.
But, in many places around the country,
it’s also meant a lot of pollution.
Mark Brush visited a place where they
say big dairies are doing it right:

Transcript

The dairy industry often uses images
of cows grazing in a green pasture.
But that’s not how most dairy farms
look these days. Instead of green
pastures, thousands of cows are penned
up in huge metal pole barns. The
mechanization of dairies makes for
cheaper milk at the grocery store.
But, in many places around the country,
it’s also meant a lot of pollution.
Mark Brush visited a place where they
say big dairies are doing it right:

(sound of a farm)

Tom Crave and his brothers run this dairy in central Wisconsin. Crave says, when they first started out, he and his brothers were single, they had 80 cows and a used car.

Now, they have around a 1,000 cows and families to look after. He says they had to get big to survive.

“It takes a lot of money to live. That’s what’s… that’s what’s driven this here. It’s just basic economics.”

It’s a theme farmers all over the country have been hearing for decades. Get big or get out. You can’t make money unless you grow.

The Crave Brothers milk their 1,000 cows three times a day. They use automated milking machines. And they turn that milk into cheese that they make across the street in their cheese factory.

But milk is not the only thing cows produce. These farms deal with millions of gallons of liquid manure.

Most farms store the manure in lagoons – basically huge pits of waste contained by earthen berms. Then, when these lagoons fill up, they spray or inject the liquid manure onto the ground as fertilizer for crops. It’s also the main way they have to get rid of all that waste.

Sometimes these big dairy farms have problems. Liquid manure runs off the crop land, contaminating rivers and lakes. And, in some cases, the earthen berms holding back the manure has leaked or given way, releasing a wave of manure, causing huge fish kills or polluting well water.

But regulators here say the Crave Brothers have been doing a good job taking care of their manure. As have most of the other big dairy farms in Wisconsin. That’s in part because these farms actively regulated in the state.

Gordon Stevenson is the Chief Runoff Manager for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

“It is not coming from these largest farms for the most part. The manure management on our 30,000 other smaller farms can be a good bit worse, and those people are not regulated.”

Dairy farms that have fewer than 700 milking cows usually are not regulated under the Clean Water Act until there’s a major problem. And some farms stay under 700 cows to avoid regulations.

“When we encounter environmental problems associated with one of these smaller farms, they can be offered cost share assistance. They’re largely voluntary programs.”

If Stevenson finds a smaller farm that’s polluting, he can offer them some state money to fix the problem. But, beyond that, he says there’s not much his office can do. As a result, some smaller farms pollute.

Jamie Saul is with Midwest Environmental Advocates. His group has represented people who were sickened from well water contaminated by manure. Saul says, there have been some problems with bigger farms in the state, but he admits the bigger challenge is how to control pollution coming from smaller, unregulated farms.

He says just offering them money to clean up is not good enough.

“We are the habit now of paying, and I think it’s pretty unique to the agricultural industry, that we pay them to reduce their pollution. Most other industries we don’t do that. We expect whatever industry it is to come into compliance with whatever standards are needed to protect the environment and public health.”

Saul says all states needs better policies to keep small farms from polluting. He says the regulations have to have that magic mix of stopping water pollution without putting too much burden on small farmers.


While Wisconsin regulators seem to be keeping an eye on their bigger farms, environmental activists say that’s not the case in other states. They say Clean Water Act rules are often not enforced against livestock farms – big or small – and that puts the environment and people’s health at risk.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Tar Sands Get Tripped Up

  • Processing tar sands crude creates more air pollution than normal. (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)

American gasoline refineries are
expanding to process a dirtier kind
of oil. Shawn Allee reports
one company’s plans hit a snag:

Transcript

American gasoline refineries are
expanding to process a dirtier kind
of oil. Shawn Allee reports
one company’s plans hit a snag:

The BP fuel refinery in Northwest Indiana wants to process more Canadian tar sands oil.
Processing tar sands crude creates more air pollution than normal. The federal
government wants more air pollution figures from BP before signing off on an air
permit.

Groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council pressed the government to step in.
The NRDC’s Ann Alexander is glad BP’s tar sands project is getting scrutiny.

“If tar sands are going to be developed, we think it’s it’s critical they be developed in
a way that complies with the Clean Air Act, because the Clean Air Act is there to
make sure it’s not the community that pays for development of tar sands through
increased pollution and the health problems that result, but that it’s BP who pays
those costs.”

BP’s tar sands oil project in Indiana is just one of several going on in the Midwest.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Dioxin Deal One Step Closer

  • A sign on the Tittabawassee River, downriver from Dow Chemical Plant, stating to avoid contact with the soil and not eat the fish due to dioxin contamination (Photo by Vincent Duffy)

The federal government and a major
chemical company have reached an
initial agreement about cleaning
up one of the nation’s largest dioxin
pollution sites. But, Shawn Allee reports, the public will
have to wait a bit to examine the
fine print:

Transcript

The federal government and a major
chemical company have reached an
initial agreement about cleaning
up one of the nation’s largest dioxin
pollution sites. But, Shawn Allee reports, the public will
have to wait a bit to examine the
fine print:

Central Michigan has a dubious distinction: The Environmental Protection Agency
claims that a flood plain there has some of the highest dioxin levels ever found in soil.

That dioxin came from a Dow chemical plant decades ago. The EPA and Dow just
concluded negotiations over a clean-up deal.

Wendy Carney is with the EPA’s regional Superfund cleanup office. Carney says the
deal is not done, though.

“This agreement doesn’t actually contain any cleanup options. It also doesn’t
address any cleanup levels for the site. That would be a part of things we would talk
about with the public in a public forum to get their feedback on those issues.”

Carney says the EPA could unveil its agreement with Dow in two weeks.

The EPA suspects dioxins cause cancer and other health problems.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Who’s Monitoring Pollution?

  • The famous photo of the Cuyahoga River fire that appeared in Time Magazine. The photo is not of the 1969 blaze, but rather of another fire on the river in 1952. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

Federal and state governments have cut
back on monitoring some big sources of
pollution, and small sources are rarely
monitored. Lester Graham reports it’s a
problem that’s even tougher when state
budgets are cut:

Transcript

Federal and state governments have cut
back on monitoring some big sources of
pollution, and small sources are rarely
monitored. Lester Graham reports it’s a
problem that’s even tougher when state
budgets are cut:

Industry does not pollute like it did in the 1960s or 70s. Today, regulators monitor most of those big factories.

Tom Lyon is the Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan.

“Big smokestack industries we have a fairly good eye on, but there are a lot of areas that we still don’t have a good handle on.”

Like small businesses which collectively can release a lot of toxins, and farms that use pesticides and fertilizers on millions acres.

Jennifer Sass is a Scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She says, under the Bush Administration, pollution monitoring of big industry was cut back. Sass says that monitoring needs to be restored and expanded to smaller sources.

“If we quit our monitoring programs, then we don’t really know. It’s a lot like putting our head in the sand.”

But many state agencies say they don’t have the resources to keep track of all those sources of pollution.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Whose Grass Is Really Greener?

  • Molly Aubuchon and Stefan Meyer survey their lawn. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Many Americans love full, lush
lawns. Fertilizers and herbicides
might help. But there’s concern
about water pollution from lawn
chemicals. Julie Grant reports
that some experts say you can use
them, just don’t over-use them:

Transcript

Many Americans love full, lush
lawns. Fertilizers and herbicides
might help. But there’s concern
about water pollution from lawn
chemicals. Julie Grant reports
that some experts say you can use
them, just don’t over-use them:

Molly Aubuchon and her husband Stefan Meyer aren’t sure
what they’re going to do. Their two little kids are running
around the yard. Stefan wants a lawn of thick, soft grass for
them to play on. But that’s not what he’s got.

Stefan: “As you can see, there’s no grass here.
I don’t know what some of this stuff is. Some kind of moss.
I think even the moss died, so now we have dead moss
that’s like yellow and brown.”

Molly: “It’s not attractive dead.”

Stefan: “No. I just think, when I’m out here cutting my grass,
I’m like, man, if I lived across the street, I’d be like, ‘hey look,
they’re cutting absolutely nothing again. They’re just running
that lawn mower over bare spots.’”

They see their neighbors, with those thick, green lawns,
spreading chemicals a few times a year. Molly and Stefan
don’t want to do that.

Molly: “Well, the fact that I’ve got kids running around here
all day. And the fact that it seeps into the water supply and
the rivers, that’s a concern to me.”

There are lots of people who are concerned about lawn
pollution. Lawns have gotten a bad wrap in some places –
because of the fertilizers and other chemicals people use on
them. In much of Canada, lawn chemicals have actually
been banned.

Lou DiGeranimo is General Manager of Water in Toronto.
He says lawn chemicals were damaging the water quality.

“People were over-fertilizing, they were using commercial
pesticides. That chemical ended up in the rivers and ended
up in the lake. We passed a bylaw that prohibited that.”

But some experts say the chemical bans in Canada are
extreme.

David Gardner is professor of turf grass at the Ohio State
University. He doesn’t think banning lawn chemical will do
anything to improve the environment.

“Based on the work that I have seen, based on the research
that has been conducted, I believe that if there is a unilateral
ban on the use of pesticides it will make absolutely no
impact on our environmental footprint.”

Gardner says compared to
other sources of pollution, like cars and over-use of
chemicals on farms, the impact of lawn care is miniscule.

Still, Gardner says people like Molly and Stefan can keep
nice lawns – without using a lot of chemicals.

He says you’ve got to cut the grass and water regularly.
He also recommends fertilizing lightly in the spring and more
heavily in the fall.

That’s what Gardner does at his house – and he uses only 6
to 8 ounces of herbicide a year.

“Putting it another way, if I were to go to a store and buy one
of those gallon jugs of ready-made herbicide, that would be
enough to last me for about 16 years.”

Gardner says the herbicide will hit its expiration date before
he has a chance to use it all.

But Molly and Stefan just aren’t sold. They don’t want to use
lawn chemicals just to appease the neighbors.

Stefan: “I just want to feel good about the way my yard
looks for my own satisfaction. I would like to cultivate some
grass that looks good, you know, with my hands.”

Besides, Stefan says, they don’t have the worst looking lawn
on the street and they’d just rather not add unnecessary
chemicals into the environment.

Stefan: “We don’t have the worst lawn on the street. Our
street is not that long. It’s only four blocks, five blocks long –
there’s a house down there and their yard looks worse than
ours.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Dollars and Streams

  • A creek runs through Melvin Hershberger's farm in Holmes County, Ohio. He was able to clean up the water with money from the Alpine Cheese Company. The company needed to offset phosphorous pollution from its factory, so it pays farmers to reduce their manure runoff. (Photo by Julie Grant)

When you hear about dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes, they’re largely caused by pollution draining from the farm belt. It can take a long time and a lot of money to reduce pollution at factories. So they’re starting to pay farmers to cut pollution instead. Julie Grant explains:

Transcript

When you hear about dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes, they’re largely caused by pollution draining from the farm belt. It can take a long time and a lot of money to reduce pollution at factories. So they’re starting to pay farmers to cut pollution instead. Julie Grant explains:

When you eat cheese, you might not realize that something so delicious creates a lot of waste. And that waste – that pollution – ends up going into the drain. It eventually ends up in rivers and lakes.

(sound of a factory)

We’re at a cheese factory in Holmes County, Ohio where they make nearly 60,000 pounds of cheese a day.

The big stainless steel vats look immaculate. But our shoes are wet.

Bob Ramseyer is CEO of the Alpine Cheese Company.

He says the floors are covered with water because the equipment is constantly being washed.

“We have a pre-rinse – that goes to drain. We have a final rinse, and that goes to drain. And we have all the floors that are flushed down and so forth, so that all ends up as part of the wastewater.”

The cheese factory’s wastewater includes not only those caustic chemical cleaners, but wasted milk by-products. One milk nutrient is the chemical, phosphorous.

About a decade ago, the Environmental Protection Agency told Ramseyer that the cheese company had to reduce the phosphorous it was releasing into the nearby river. Ramseyer was concerned.

“The equipment alone was going to cost a half million dollars. We projected it was going to cost between a half million dollars and a million dollars a year in operating costs. So we were looking for any way we could to reduce that cost. That’s where we got into the nutrient trading program.”

Alpine Cheese was among the first to negotiate what’s called a nutrient – or water quality – trading program. Instead of reducing the phosphorous coming from his factory, he pays farmers to reduce manure – another source of phosphorous – from washing from feedlots into the river.

(sound of cows)

Mervin Hershberger is an Amish dairy farmer with 125 acres and 54 milking cows.

(sound of a stream)

His farm looks like a postcard – beautiful hilly green pasture.

But a lot of the manure was washing off his farm into the streams. Herberberger says the cows were grazing right around the water.

“With the cows being in the creek we could see dirty water. The rocks were covered with dirt from cow’s waste. You walk through the stream, you’d kick up dirt and waste from the cows.”

Hershberger didn’t like it, but he didn’t have money to change it.

So when the County Soil and Water Conservation District held a neighborhood meeting to explain that Alpine Cheese was going to pay to reduce pollution from nearby farms, Hershberger saw a way to afford to clean up his farm.

He did about a dozen projects to reduce manure run-off into the water, like building a fence to keep the cows out of the stream.

And the little creek is bouncing back:

“As of now, it’s just totally clean, what you see. For the minnows and all the critters that are in the creek.”

Hershberger gets paid for the amount of phosphorous he keeps out of the water.

About 25 other farms in Holmes County are doing similar projects to reduce water pollution. And Alpine Cheese foots the bill. In exchange, the company doesn’t have to clean up wastewater coming from the cheese factory.

It’s a lot like a cap and trade program on water pollution.

There are a growing number of small programs like this around the country. But some people are trying to create water trading projects on a much larger scale.

That would mean a factory in one state might be able to pay farmer in another state. Eventually, all of the thousands of factories in just one river basin could pay farmers enough to reduce dead zones like the one in the Gulf of Mexico and in some of the Great Lakes.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Drugs in the Water

  • There is some confusion about what to do with unused medications (Photo source: Shorelander at Wikimedia Commons)

The drugs we take are showing up in our drinking water, and they’re showing up in fish. The federal government’s now saying that in most cases, you should never flush unused drugs down the drain. There are safer ways to dispose of them. But even if you want to do the right thing, it’s not always easy. Rebecca Williams takes a look at what you should and should not do with your medications:

Transcript

The drugs we take are showing up in our drinking water, and they’re showing up in fish. The federal government’s now saying that in most cases, you should never flush unused drugs down the drain. There are safer ways to dispose of them. But even if you want to do the right thing, it’s not always easy. Rebecca Williams takes a look at what you should and should not do with your medications:

In the U.S., there are about 12,000 brand name and generic drugs on the market. And who knows how many over the counter drugs.

Scientists are finding many of these drugs in our water. Everything from caffeine, to allergy and anti-cancer drugs, to antidepressants.

Now, they’re finding these drugs at very low levels. But they’re pretty much everywhere.

An Associated Press investigation found trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in the drinking water of more than 40 million Americans.

“You know, we don’t think it’s enough to cause public harm but honestly nobody’s sure.”

That’s Sahar Swidan. She’s a pharmacist.

Right now, Swidan’s going through a five foot tall box of prescription drugs that people have brought to her store in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They might be expired, or just not needed anymore.

(sound of pill bottle shaking)


“Asthma medications, growth hormones for patients – so really the gamut could be anything and everything.”

A disposal company picks up the drugs about once a month and incinerates them.

Swidan’s drug take-back program is pretty rare. Many pharmacies are not set up to collect unused drugs.

One reason is, it takes a lot of work. Swidan has to sort through the drugs and make sure there aren’t any controlled substances – things like narcotics. It’s illegal for pharmacies to take these back in most cases.

The Drug Enforcement Agency is talking about revising their disposal rules for controlled substances. But for now you usually have to get rid of them yourself. So, how do you do that?

You can dissolve pills or caplets in water, and mix in kitty litter or coffee grounds. That’s to make the stuff look gross and undesirable. Then dump it all into ziptop bags, wrap it up in duct tape, and throw it away.

But to make things more complicated, there’s still a short list of drugs that you’re supposed to flush down the drain. The Food and Drug Administration says the drugs on this list are too dangerous to toss in the trash.

Connie Jung is with the FDA’s pharmacy affairs department. She says the drug label will tell you if you’re supposed to flush them.

“For the small number of prescription drugs that have flushing recommendations they have these because the drugs are strong narcotic pain relievers or other controlled substances. These drugs can be dangerous to those who aren’t supposed to be taking them, particularly children or pets.”

Jung says the FDA is currently reviewing disposal methods for these kinds of drugs… because flushing them down the toilet is starting to raise some questions.

An even bigger problem is that most of the drug residues getting into our water are coming from drugs we take and excrete.

Bryan Brooks is a researcher at Baylor University. He recently found low levels of seven drugs in fish caught near wastewater treatment plants. He says these sewer plants just can’t filter out drugs.

“These wastewater treatment facilities were largely not designed to treat to really ultra low levels. Compounds like birth control medications can be active at low part per trillion levels.”

Right now Brooks is trying to sort out what effects drugs are having on fish.

Hormones like estrogen appear to be feminizing male fish. Antidepressants might change how fish behave. And no one’s sure how drugs might be affecting our drinking water.

Brooks says one thing that can be done at the treatment plant is adding reverse osmosis filters. But they’re expensive.

Brooks says there’s not much we can do about excreting drugs, but at the very least we shouldn’t be flushing drugs down the drain.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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