Prozac "found in drinking water"

[Nambe]

LONDON (Reuters)

Traces of the anti-depressant Prozac have been found in the drinking water supply, setting off alarm bells with environmentalists concerned about potentially toxic effects.

The Observer said that a report by the government's environment watchdog found Prozac was building up in river systems and groundwater used for drinking supplies.

The exact quantity of Prozac in the drinking water was unknown, but the Environment Agency's report concluded Prozac could be potentially toxic in the water table. ..

Norman Baker, environment spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said it looked "like a case of hidden mass medication upon the unsuspecting public". ..

Ride Don’t Drive * * It’s Global Cool

[mtnester]

1. Jesus H. Christ

eom

[monarch]

4. I say: "Put it in the drinking water."

Heck, that stuff is expensive and think of all the people without insurance that will benefit.

[Ilsa]

11. Please tell me you are kidding.

Drugging people without their knowledge or consent is a violation of human rights and is quite dangerous.

[monarch]

50. Get a grip!

The idea is ludicrous.

[Ilsa]

52. Excuse me, but your words didn't reflect

sarcasm. I've seen worse (much worse) posted on DU in quite serious tones, so it is not unreasonable I might think you are serious. You might try adding a phrase indicating your frame of mind if you don't want to be mistaken in the future.

[monarch]

64. I"m very sorry but

I thought that my reference to the cost might give one pause. Considering that a therapeutic dose of Prozac costs about $100/month, that people may not drink that much water from the public supply, and that water supplies are used for far more than drinking, can you imagine what it would cost to ensure that anyone was affected.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

66. anti-depressants linked to rise in suicide rates...in the news this AM

[monarch]

67. I don't want to beat a dead horse here but

anti-depressants are just that-- anti-depressants-- they are not happy pills. They are given to people who are clinically depressed, a population that is prone to suicide. I did not see the news story to which you refer, but studies in the past have shown that, in some people, who have been so paralyzed by their depression that they can't lead normal lives, medication lifts the depression just enough that they can expend the effort to kill themselves.

My point was, and is, that people who are not depressed have nothing to fear from this scary story. It would be impossible to ingest enough medication from the drinking water to have any effect on a depressed person, let alone someone who is not suffering from clinical depression.

I think there are more important things to worry about.

[The Zanti Regent]

34. Well, THANK GOD IT ISN'T FLORIDE!

I remember how the Birchers always got pissed about flouride!

[no name no slogan]

46. It's the UK, they've got National Health

And Prozac is a covered drug. If they need it, they go see a GP, who may or may not refer them to a psychiatrist, and they get a prescription.

Over here, though, you'll still have to go through the hoops if you're uninsured. And then, even with generics, you'll still pay through your nose for it.

[LauraK]

51. Where's the hash oil!

Let's get crative.

[many a good man]

2. I hate it when they

mess with the purity of our bodily fluids. Although lately I find it hasn't been bothering me as much...

[linazelle]

6. LOL @ "not bothering me as much"...nt

[TexasSissy]

12. Yeah, man. I used to get uptight about such things, but now, whatever.

[pookastew]

13. I got it.

Hilarious.

[bacchant]

25. Hey ya know? Bush isn't really all that bad... ZZzzzz

[Skarbrowe]

39. Hahahaha!! TorchesandPitchforks!

My mother (may she rest in peace) was given Prozac years ago for severe arthritic pain. I ask her if the Prozac made her pain go away. She said no, but it doesn't bother me as much. heh heh

Thanks for the chuckle and the memory.

Skarbrowe

[Gman]

3. Hmmm...

If it were the water table here, I wouldn't be too sure this was a bad thing.

[ClintonTyree]

5. So that's................

how they intend to control the population, both population growth wise and psychologically! :tinfoilhat:

[DBoon]

7. Terrorists are tampering with the water supply!

n/t

[in_cog_ni_to]

9. My bet would be on OUR government

messing with our water supply. :shrug: Just a guess. No reason to think OUR government would EVER do anything like that. :eyes:

[LauraK]

53. They definately do it on our county jail.

That's what I heard.

[jmowreader]

68. If they're going to put something in the water, it wouldn't be Prozac

LSD is cheaper and you need less of it.

I don't even wanna think about Bush with a head full of acid, though.

[0007]

15. .....and the terrorist are us!

This calls for a code red, red dog alert...will someone please wake Ridge and get him more water.

[LauraK]

54. cr is a terrorist.

What a jerk.

[Dogmudgeon]

8. So, when do we get LSD in our water supply?

If we're going to drink mind drugs, they might as well be the fun mind drugs.

--bkl

[NNadir]

10. Actually, just about every drug made can be detected in water

with sensitive enough instrumentation. One can measure the presence of drug substances typically at picogram (1 trillionth of a gram) per ml levels. This is detection which is very different than physiologically important contamination.

If one is looking for them, one can measure antibiotics, anti-cancer compounds, anti-depressants, impotence drugs (Viagara), etc, etc in the environment.

The reason for this is that firstly people discard unused drugs which end up in landfills and leach into the environment, and secondly that people excrete drugs into septic and sewage systems where they can persist.

I very much doubt that Prozac is in any water supply anywhere in physiologically important concentrations.

[BiggJawn]

16. Probably more DDT and Round-up in the water.

My water utility tests for pesticides residue, but I've yet to see figures for Prozac or Viagra. No PCB' yet. Not surprising, since there's no electrical industry in the area, like down around Bloomington.

[nolabels]

36. That really would be a good combo "Prozac and Viagra"

[Window]

40. ROTFL!

.

[Ernesto]

35. Agreed

I first heard the prozac story over 3 years ago... Wasn't a big deal then either.

[struggle4progress]

43. Long-term presence of trace antibiotics in water supply ...

... really should concern us.

[A_Possum]

58. Antibacterial soaps are reaching biologically active concentrations

Virtually all the pump hand soaps now contain antibiotics (you have to look hard at places like Whole Foods to find any w/o.) Already studies showing antibacterial additives are occurring in lakes and waterways in concentrations which affect organisms.

This is the very bottom of the food chain, and will start to affect everything on up the line. Looking at another Silent Spring again.

[midnight armadillo]

71. Caffeine is used as a tracer

Around Boston the Mass Water Resource Auth. uses caffeine concentration (or were going to start doing so) as a tracer to find leaky sewer systems.

[Iris]

14. Yeah, but

All kinds of drugs are found in drinking water - acetamenophine, ibuprofene and all the other stuff I can't spell. It's not unusual and is probably not harmful or we'd all be dead or crazy by now.

[CrispyQ]

20. I read a while back one of the drugs they are most concerned about . . .

is caffine. All that coffee tossed down the drain.

Drink purified water -- steam distilled is best.

[Iris]

27. OMG!

Maybe that's what's wrong with me! I drink water all day long!

[Scooter24]

17. Wow....

[tabasco]

18. Hello. Meet your new pharmacist.

[amazona]

19. one cause of obesity epidemic ?

I have known a couple of people get on SSRIs and their weight zoomed -- in one case the man's weight doubled and he was not small to begin with -- close to 400 pounds now. He has no option because of the severity of his mental illness, but I wonder how many people (especially children) who are developing very stubborn fat that won't be lost are victims of the drinking water. Not everyone has this reaction but some people certainly do. It's sad. Of course everyone will blame the victim for watching TV and drinking Cokes although we all watched TV and drank Cokes in the 70s and kids weren't fat.

My nearly 400 pound friend also has the other problem with Prozac -- can't ejaculate. Really, the drug for him is close to a form of chemical castration. He takes it because he must but it is not something that anyone should ingest if they don't have to IMHO.

[Gyre]

33. B.S.

I've been taking Prozac ever since Bush took office and I'm as thin and horny as ever. I would suggest that your friends have other issues contributing to their problems.

Gyre

[KittyWampus]

38. My Brother, Who Was Rail Thin His WHOLE LIFE, Has Gained 50+Lbs

taking Prozac. He MUST take it. And the other options have very adverse reactions for him.

I would suggest you don't know what you're talking about.

[DemBones DemBones]

48. B.S. yourself, drugs don't affect everyone the same way.

Many people have those problems with anti-depressants.

[loyalsister]

57. BBS

Those are well known side effects, however not everyone experiences them. Ask an actual Dr. or read the literature. Education is a wonderful thing.

[leesa]

21. Wouldn't surprise me at all if we are being chemically controlled by the

fascists. Remember, Rumsfeld was in control of Serle when he bought Nutrasweet approval from the FDA despite its documented record of causing brain lesions and memory changes. It had been on the DOD list of potential WMDs they were trying to test and develop. Didn't quite make it as a WMD so they dumped it into the food chain. What has it done to us?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

44. Isn't it exciting?

Wouldn't surprise me at all if we are being chemically controlled by the fascists. -- Posted by _____

It is so much more exciting to imagine a fascist conspiracy isn't it, than to seek out the much more likely, much more mundane explanations such as leaching from landfills. So much easier to blame the bogeyman than to blame ourselves for improper disposal of pharmaceuticals.

Before we have a tizzy fit about becoming zombified due to some vast corporate conspiracy, realize that caffeine is present in the water supply in significant quantities to be biologically active in the ecosystem. So now your face should be red as you remember all the times you've ordered coffee at the coffeeshop. That thump you hear is the espresso grinds holder being wacked against the garbage bin.

Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately
explained by stupidity."

[donsu]

22. kick

nt

[napi21]

23. OK, where is this happening? London? I'm moving!

I saw this reported by Reuters, London. Does that mean this is supposed to be happening in London, or only being reported there?

I think I'll more to where ever it is. With all the BS going around, I could use some free Prozac!

[LifeDuringWartime]

24. i thought this was in the US

it would surely explain the amount of bush support

it probably already IS in the water supplies here, nobody has found it yet

[Eric J in MN]

26. They should test US water for Prozac and other common

pharmaceuticals, to see if our water is getting contaminanted, too.

[cliss]

28. Of all the stories I've read here at the DU,

this is one of the scariest. Does anyone besides me smell a rat?

Why Prozac? Why not vitamin C? Prozac is one of the most common prescription drugs for calming people down (and of course, building dependency and NOT getting at the problem, whatever it may be).

I recall Enron was involved with getting their claws on water supplies (I think it was India). They wanted to charge people for their drinking water. Maybe even here in the US. Or maybe they were starting up a pilot project to see how far they could go, and then move on to greener pastures here at home.

Somebody had better start looking at our water supply here.

[Dookus]

70. No, no rat

just natural chemistry.

You can probably find Vitamin C in water, too, if you test for it.

Nothing in this article indicates that anybody is purposely adding Prozac to the drinking water. That's silly.

They're saying that prozac, like ALL chemicals widely in use, find their way in trace amounts to the water supply. There is nowhere close to a therapeutic level of prozac in the water.

[VoteDemocratic2004]

29. What happens when someone takes a drug test for a new job?

If Prozac shows up in their system without their knowledge?

[salin]

30. I just have to say it... "Gross!"

So much prozac being used - that cumulative amount excreted into the sewage - is measurable in the (presumably treated) water supply. Ewwwwww.

[LizW]

32. That's what I got from it

Drink the water and you're inadvertently taking the Prozac someone else pissed out. Bleagh.

But if that is what is happening, then I wonder if they've tested for beer in the water supply? Seems like there would be a lot. ;)

[lakeguy]

31. go to the article and vote it up

people should be more aware of chemical buildup in the water. there's more than just prozac in the water. just for starters, there are a number of chemicals found in things like anitbacterial soaps that can remain in the water and alter the sex of aquatic species. no one seems to know how these same chemicals will affect humans though.

[DulceDecorum]

37. Chemicals in regular water

are making men sterile.
The sperm counts of European and American males
have sunk down into the third sub-asment over the last hundred years.
The Pentagon has been in panic mode for tthe last three decades,
ever since it discovered that
the "minorities" are NOT minorities.

One UN establishment that is especially effective in the field of population control is the UN Development Programme, which has field offices in more than 100 countries. It provides funds for population activities both to governments and to non-governmental organisations, and takes part in such endeavors as the dissemination of propaganda, the provision of supplies, equipment and training for birth control clinics, and the support of local staff offices for UNFPA. In fact, UNDP's governing council is responsible for the supervision of UNFPA.
Ironically, UNDP is headed by William Draper III, the son of the late U.S. military official who assumed a key role in the development of a psychological warfare strategy for Africa, later publicly called for "bilateral" population control activities as part of the American military assistance effort, and who subsequently devoted his energies to rallying financial and political support for the newly-founded UNFPA.
And the fixation with the relative demographic strength of so-called "white" nations has not visibly changed over the past half century. "Europe is literally melting away like snow in the sun, slipping from 15.6 per cent of the world population in 1950 to 10.2 per cent in 1985 and 6.4 percent in 2025," complains a 1989 United Nations publication, World Population at the Turn of the Century.
http://www.africa2000.com/BNDX/bao301.htm

Reading 9. WHAT IS N.S.S.M. 200...? And why do Western Leaders care so much about population control?
http://www.africa2000.com/INDX/nssm200.htm
Here we get to one of the primary documents of the population debate, a summary of the infamous 1974 National Security Study Memorandum - NSSM 200 - the Nixon-Kissinger, NSC, CIA, Pentagon, USAID guidance document on population control and the U.S. political interests. This reading provides excepts from the memo; it shows, in brief, that the purpose of pursing a policy of population control was to serve the U.S. strategic, economic, and military interest at the expense of the developing countries.
http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/richard.robbins/legacy/population_readings.htm

This year, after two years of foraging for water, Enron's water spinoff collapsed, reporting losses of more than $300 million and retreating from the stock market. A spokesman for the company, Keith Miceli, said Enron was "disappointed that the global market for water did not develop for us."
Other companies, most based in Europe, have had more success.
http://www.mindfully.org/Water/Water-Land-Parched.htm

Just so you know,
Enron had a subsidiary known as Azurix which was run by a woman known as Rebecca Marks.
Azurix was leading in the rush to annex, steal and grab the water supplies of the world. They were plannng to make you pay dearly for ever drop of water and I guess the current Supreme Court would probably have ruled that rain belongs to them.
Brave New World,
that has such people in it.

[nolabels]

41. Them chems make you see funny too

We are literally cooking our own goose, and stewing in it :o

On edit: eeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww again

[Stephanie]

42. Yes, I think Greg Palast wrote about this?

Azurix.

Your post also makes me think of Sudan. I have no doubt.

[Swamp Rat]

45. Big Brother is working overtime

Someday, we'll receive jail time for NOT taking our drugs... shades of "THX1138."

[Zorra]

47. 24 million prescriptions for anti-depressants per year in 2001 in England.

Probably higher numbers now.

Something is very, very wrong.

"My young men shall never work, men who work cannot dream; and wisdom comes to us in dreams.
You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mothers breast? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest.
You ask me to dig for stone. Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again.
You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it and be rich like white men. But how dare I cut off my mother's hair." Smohalla

[PROGRESSIVE1]

49. Some VERY POWERFUL PERSON WHO DID THIS NEEDS....

to have the NUTS CUT OFF!!!

:grr:

[LauraK]

55. I shouldn't be doing this.

The garden party had too much good bordeaux.

[Aunt Anti-bush]

56. I could probably use a nice big glass of water right now...

eom

[loyalsister]

59. Chemistry

There is no way in this world that a glass of water will contain enough of any drug to produce any effects.
There is a massive difference between trace amounts disolved in water in comparison to the miligram concentrations of direct delivery.
People here are overreacting. If this is something that we have identified and end the practice, we can make certain that there isn't a massive build up in the water.
It's certainly not recommended that it continue, but freaking out over nothing doesn't get you anywhere. I take a full gram of one medication twice a day. You just have to get some perspective on the numbers here.
As someone pointed out, this is just one of the many things going into our landfills that we should be alerted to.

[goforit]

60. Now people can have a happy revolution.

Smile!!!

It's Wally world!!!

[montana_hazeleyes]

61. I've noticed

the Queen has been smiling more lately.

[Rex]

62. It's a Prozac World Order Bay-bee!!!!

Let's all drop out, tune out, and numb up! Election, smelection - someone tell me when my ride is here...weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....

[stickdog]

63. Well, isn't that a pisser!

Is it in you?

[LeftHander]

65. BIg Pharma and Bottled Water.....

Let me guess....Pfizer owns some bottled water companies..?

[Gingersnapsback]

69. My thoughts exactly. It seems like everyone is

carrying a bottle of water. They even have brief cases with water bottle holders on the outside.

[Heidi]

73. Does no one remember . . .

those old Dow Chemical advertisements? "Better living . . . through chemistry . . .

[johnfunk]

72. It could be worse than Prozac...

... it could've been Alan Keyes`s sweat!

[johnfunk]

74. We need a new EPA director...

Elizabeth "Prozac Nation" Wurtzel!