Barnstable County Report

No Need To Panic, But Here’s One Rx To Help Protect Cape’s Water Supply

By George Heufelder, MS, RS, Director,
Barnstable County Department of Health & Environment
In early March, national and local newspapers reported on the “vast array” of personal care products and pharmaceuticals found in the drinking water supplies of 41 million Americans. Like clockwork, the calls came in to our department from individuals wanting to know whether the Cape’s water supplies have been checked, and what they could do to avoid exposure to the myriad of antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers or sex hormones that were reported to be in their water.

The press wanted to know how bad it really was. There are no easy answers.

The truth is that along with technological and medical advances, we have created some complex chemistry to answer our personal care and medical needs.

Many drugs, after treating our medical issue, pass through our bodies and exit in urine and feces in slightly less concentration than we took them in. Lest we lay the blame solely on synthetic compounds, naturally produced estrogen (a hormone prevalent in females) and androgen compounds (hormones prevalent in males) are voided in the urine of healthy individuals and also have been shown to have environmental consequences.

Passed into the groundwater by way of our wastewater disposal practices (septic systems and municipal leaching areas), these compounds can travel, mixed with our drinking water, to points where they can be withdrawn.

Before we crawl into a cave and hibernate, or run out and buy more bottled water, there a few things that we should know to put the problem in perspective.

Foremost, in nearly every reported case, the amounts of pharmaceuticals found in environmental samples were orders of magnitude lower than what might affect our bodies. The issue of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in drinking water is a case where the analytical chemistry (which can detect in the parts per trillion range) is far ahead of the toxicology capable of telling us the effects at such low concentrations.

Still, the lack of knowledge is not comforting, especially in light of the impacts of hormone-mimicking compounds already observed. Estrogenic compounds (chemicals that cause the production of estrogen) have been found to have significant environmental effects on fish and other lower vertebrates by altering the reproductive cycle and rendering animals unable to reproduce.

Although impacts of humans ingesting water with low levels of estrogenic compounds have not documented similar results, there are suspicions nonetheless that various physiological changes induced by both estrogenic and other pharmaceutical and personal care product chemicals can have health impacts in humans over time.  

One sobering fact to remember: the aquifer beneath Cape Cod, our sole source for drinking water, in some instances is made up in part from wastewater that has passed through the natural purification of the soil. However, since all of our wastewater on Cape Cod is discharged to the ground, it does not take much imagination to guess what happens in areas where private wells coincide with dense development served by onsite septic systems and the purification process is not complete. The foresight of many water supply planners has resulted in the protection of much of the land surrounding the area contributing recharge to the public drinking water wells. However, even some of these areas are vulnerable to contamination.

So, what can you do about this?

Well, there is one large source of contamination that we can do something about. Each year, millions of unused medications are discharged into wastewater treatment plants and septic systems via the sink or toilet bowl, only to end up in our groundwater. Unfortunately there are no present proper disposal guidelines in Massachusetts. However, the state of Florida, which in many ways resembles the Cape in aquifer and environmental vulnerability, suggests that expired or unused medications be disposed of in the following way:

First, keep the medicine in the original container, but scratch off all personal information that might be on the label. For pills, add water to start dissolving them, for liquids add something inedible such as cat litter or cayenne pepper. Close the lid and secure with packing tape.

lace the bottle inside an opaque container such as a coffee can or plastic laundry container (don’t subsequently put these containers in the recycling bin). Tape that container closed and hide it in the trash. This little effort on our part can play a major role in preventing greater problems in the future.