A recent five-month-long inquiry by the Associated Press National Investigative Team found trace levels of numerous pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones, in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans. The AP notes that communities are not required to test for the presence of drugs in drinking water, and those that do often do not share the results with customers.

As part of its effort, members of the AP National Investigative Team surveyed 62 metropolitan areas and 52 smaller cities, reporting on positive test results in drinking water supplies in 24 major cities. Tests were also conducted in the watersheds of 35 major providers, detecting pharmaceuticals in 28. In addition, the AP reviewed hundreds of scientific reports, analyzed federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study site and treatment plants and interviewed more than 230 officials, academics and scientists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has noted that previous studies have detected pharmaceuticals and person care products (PPCPs) in water supplies. According to the Agency, "To date, scientists have found no evidence of adverse human health effects from PPCPs in the environment." This inquiry, however, demonstrated the advancements and increasing ability of the technology to detect substances at these trace levels.

Following the release of the AP study, Senate hearings have been scheduled and there have been calls for federal solutions including the EPA to expand the list of contaminants that utilities are required to test for. Pharmaceutical industry officials also announced they would launch a new initiative with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service focused on telling Americans how to safely dispose of unused medications.

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More Testing for Drugs in Water Sought

Lack of security, corruption, limited electricity, a shortage of safe drinking water and rundown sanitation and sewage systems are causing diseases and frustrations in Baghdad. Currently, sixty-five percent of Iraqis having no access to piped drinking water and nearly seventy-five percent with no access to a good sewage system.

The daily need for drinking water for Baghdad's residents is at least 3.25 million cubic meters, while the actual amount piped daily is about 2 million m3 per day. According to Baghdad's water directorate, there is an "acute crisis of drinking water as most of the water pipelines are outdated, having seen more than 30 years of services and some families, especially in suburban areas, depend on cisterns that only bring them contaminated underground water."

Of Baghdad's three sewage plants, one is out of action, another is working at below capacity, while a pipe blockage in the third means sewage is forming a huge lake, according to the civilian spokesman of the Baghdad Security Plan. Baghdad's Health Directorate states that at least 200-250 cases of waterborne diseases are being treated each week in the capital's hospitals.

A report issued last summer by the relief agency Oxfam and the Non-Governmental Organization Coordination Committee network in Iraq said that about seventy percent of Iraqis were without adequate water supplies, up from fifty percent in 2003. That includes over two million people who have been displaced inside Iraq by the fighting, which has forced many to live in unsanitary conditions where sewage can infest food and water and easily spread cholera and other water-borne diseases.

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Baghdad Residents' Health at Risk for Lack of Water, Sewage Systems

A 2007 scorecard shows the United Nation's goal of improving sanitation by 2015 is likely to be missed by 600 million people worldwide if current trends continue. Despite progress in nations such as China, only 3 in 10 people now have a connection to a public sewerage system, as proper sewers, with pipelines and treatment plants, are prohibitively costly for many nations.

Earlier this month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said that more than five billion people - or sixty-seven percent of the world's population - are expected to be without a connection to public sewerage in 2030. That is up by 1.1 billion from 2000, when seventy-one percent of a smaller world population had no connection.

Experts say a part of the solution, especially to cut water-borne diseases for the rural poor, may lie in renewed and smarter exploitation of nature - for example through plants or soil bacteria that feed on waste. According to U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) "about 90 percent of the sewage and 70 percent of the industrial waste in developing countries are being discharged untreated into water courses…understanding the ability of peat lands, or marshes, or wetlands, to play an integral part in filtering could help." Additionally, a better understanding of the natural water cycle, under threat from climate change stoked by human use of fossil fuels, is needed to help manage water from "rains to drains." Experts note that global warming may aggravate water shortages for hundreds of millions of people, for instance, by disrupting Africa's monsoons or by thawing Himalayan glaciers whose seasonal meltwater now feeds crops from China to India.

For more about cholera, please go to:
World's Sanitation Goals Slip

The Source Water Collaborative (SWC) is launching the "Your Water. Your Decision." Campaign to help local decision-makers take advantage of opportunities to protect sources of drinking water, understand the costs involved and consider ways to pay for it. The SWC, a group of 16 national organizations and three federal agencies including EPA, was formed with the joint signing of a vision statement in February 2006 to further the goal of protecting sources of drinking water.

As part of this initiative, the SWC has developed a guide for community leaders and a toolkit for using the guide. The "Your Water. Your Decision." guide is intended as a quick source of key information on local options for protecting drinking water, including development, stewardship and budgeting. Using the theme, "how you govern can determine what you drink," the guide was developed as a tool to enable local officials to take action within their communities and with neighboring communities.

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National Group Launches "Your Water. Your Decision." Campaign

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