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Medications are being produced and consumed in ever-increasing numbers. With this rise in consumption, researchers are finding the presence of these medications in our drinking water sources, which means they make it all the way through waste water treatment, into our water resources, through fresh water treatment and eventually into our home water supplies. These second-hand drugs include hormones, anti-cancer chemotherapy, birth control pills, caffeine, antibiotics, heart medications, painkillers, psychiatric drugs and others.

These medications not only come from consumers who excrete them from their bodies into the sewers, but from drug manufacturing companies, hospitals and clinics that discharge them into the sewers as well, along with being excreted from farm animals being treated with veterinary medications, where they percolate down into the ground and pollute underground water sources.

All water ultimately is recycled water, even though it has been treated before reaching our homes. What was once waste water eventually winds up in rivers, lakes or underground aquifers where municipalities obtain their water for their citizens. These drug "left-overs" had their pharmacological effect on the original medication consumers, and in turn can have unwanter residual effects on the next person drinking recycled tap water.

Some of these second-hand drugs are endocrine disrupters. They cause hormonal effects on the body which can lead to menstrual and reproductive abnormalities and breast cancer in women, and testicular cancer, infertility, feminization and gynecomastia (breast growth) in men. Also, the presence of antibiotics in our water supply is especially of concern to scientists who fear they may cause disease-causing bacteria to become resistant to treatment.

Some might think I am being over-concerned, but the problem has the attention of scientists both in the U.S. and in Europe, where medication consumption is the highest. Of even greater concern, is that is is expected that the number of medications that will be produced and consumed in the future will increase by twenty times over current numbers. This will surely increase the amount of second-hand drugs expected to pollute our water supply in the future, and municipal utilities cannot remove them from our water even now.

None of us wants to consume water that contains drugs that someone else had already taken and excreted. If we need medications for treatment, we prefer to go to a drugstore, thank you. The only way to ideally deal with this dilemma is to be proactive and filter your own water at home to remove these drug chemicals, which also has the benefit or removing other contaminants such as microorganisms, chlorine, pesticides, petrochemicals, toxic metals and more.