Quebec Study Finds ‘Cocktail of Different Pesticides’ in Treated Tap Water

There is widespread evidence that pharmaceutical and chemical pollution in tap water has become a global problem. Around the world drug and chemical companies have been polluting the environment for decades now, with the result that drinking water supplies have become contaminated with measurable amounts of dangerous chemicals. Rarely admitted by public health authorities, the fact is that water treatment plants were never designed to deal with the presence of many of these toxic compounds.

While a proportion of the drugs in tap water results from people flushing their unused prescriptions down the toilet, or from not all of the pills being metabolized in patients’ bodies and thus similarly ending up in the sewer system, in some countries vast amounts of pharmaceuticals are also being released legally into waterways providing water for drinking. Pharmaceutical and chemical pollution is rapidly becoming an environmental health hazard and should urgently be addressed by national, regional, and global health authorities alike.

To read how over 40 percent of the world’s rivers now contain harmful levels of pharmaceutical drug pollution, see this article on our website.