Drugs in the water: Doom du jour?

By now, you’ve probably been inundated (sorry) with stories about our drug-laced water. The Associated Press, following a lengthy investigation, has published a series about how trace amounts of pharmaceutical drugs in water supplies may be damaging our health and harming wildlife.

The stories are alarming, describing how antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones are detected in the water supplies of 41 million people in the U.S., and how these same compounds can cause reproductive problems, birth defects and strange behavior in fish and even animals as large as elk.

The stories have already led to calls by Sen. Barbara Boxer and other political ambulance chasers for hearings, reports, studies, etc.

Amid all the lurid details and alarmed reactions coming out, there is one thing notably missing in most reports, and that is any trace of skepticism.

At great personal risk of once again being labeled a denier, luddite, flat-earther or any of the other pejoratives favored by the scaredy-cat crowd, allow me to supply some needed doubt.

I’ll try to confine myself to three points:

1. Perceived “suddenness” of the problem. Something this big simply doesn’t happen overnight. The AP stories would lead readers to believe that scientists have known for years about this potential danger to our water supply but that water agencies have kept it under wraps and not reported it because there was no consensus (red-flag word) about the risk, and the public could misinterpret the danger. Yet, AP was able to find out all this information apparently very easily. This sets my Spidey sense to tingling because it could be a ploy by a government agency — in this case, the EPA, whose bosses claim to recognize the “growing concern” — for more money in a tough economy, when budgets are threatened. Consider: If you are in charge of a government agency like the EPA and want to increase your budget, you would normally have to get in line, hat in hand, with all the other agencies in Washington. But if there were some sort of emergency, then you could go to the front of the line. If you were to just announce an emergency, though, people might be skeptical about your claims. However, if the “emergency” were to be “discovered” by, say, a months-long investigation by an element of the independent press. … And if the story could coincidentally come out around the time Democrats in Congress had just begun discussing the next year’s budget (which it has). …
2. Vagueness of the claims. Although the AP stories initially mention measurements like “parts per trillion,” which is infinitesimally small, most of their findings are not terribly specific. They describe several experiments by scientists who expose various species of creatures to conditions “similar” to certain bodies of water but don’t discuss how those conditions may be different or alike to natural conditions. The stories mention repeatedly that certain chemicals have been “detected,” but mostly not in what amounts. Also, while the AP discusses testing of water “sources,” it does not offer much description of the circumstances or locations of this testing, nor does it spend much time on what happens after water is treated for consumption. It cites “independent researchers” who tested some samples of drinking water and obtained results different from certain utilities, but it doesn’t say who these people are, how different their findings are or how reliable their methods may be. Yet, despite the vagueness of the AP’s relation of all these scientific findings, the writers assert with confidence, “The situation is undoubtedly worse than suggested by the positive test results in the major population centers documented by the AP.”
3. Incomprehensible scale. For the most part, the news stories haven’t gotten into specific amounts, but the AP nonetheless asserts the supposedly dire health effects, from feminized fish to mood-altered elks. In one experiment reported without any apparent consciousness of irony by the AP, researchers are described jolting carps by the dozens into unconsciousness, scooping them up, killing them and removing their gonads to be sent to labs where other researchers will run tests to determine if pharmaceuticals pose a danger to fish. (My guess: not as big a danger as cattle-prod-wielding researchers.) In another vaguely described experiment, the AP reported “Atlantic salmon exposed to levels of estrogen similar to those found in the North Sea had severe reproductive problems.” Without providing any real numbers, AP expects us to believe that humans have created and dumped enough pharmaceutical estrogen to alter the chemical composition of the North Sea. And as AP reports that pharmaceuticals are being detected in surface water and in underground aquifers and rivers as well, it’s implied that the human race is capable of producing enough of these chemicals to pollute the entire planet. It fits in great with the environmentalist mantra that people are parasites on the Earth, but an ounce of common sense would argue otherwise. People simply don’t have the kind of power we like to think we have. Our actual ability to affect the entire planet is pathetically small, like trying to push an SUV with your pinky.

Now, I’m not ready to say that this whole issue is just another scam, like global warming, concocted by government agencies and grant-grubbing researchers with the cooperation of a willingly duped press. But there is enough dubious information in the AP reports to warrant an extremely high level of skepticism until there is more solid proof. Meanwhile, hang on to your wallet and drink plenty of water — still cheaper and healthier than soda.