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There is an unhealthy cocktail of drugs in your drinking water. With each sip, you self-medicate with anti-anxiety and even psychotropic drugs.
Without knowing it, you are being medicated. Maybe even now you have a cup of coffee or tea in hand, filled with water compliments of your local municipal system. Think those sodas and energy drinks are any better? Think again. Unless the water is specifically filtered for pharmaceuticals, you’re still getting dosed.
There is an unhealthy cocktail of drugs in your drinking water.
Did you know with each sip, you self-medicate with anti-anxiety and even psychotropic drugs? That’s right, according to a report released this past week in Science, environmental pollution by pharmaceutical companies are a major threat to our world’s water supplies.
According to the study’s abstract;
“Here we show that a benzodiazepine anxiolytic drug (oxazepam) alters behavior and feeding rate of wild European perch (Perca fluviatilis) at concentrations encountered in effluent-influenced surface waters. Individuals exposed to water with dilute drug concentrations (1.8 micrograms liter–1) exhibited increased activity, reduced sociality, and higher feeding rate. As such, our results show that anxiolytic drugs in surface waters alter animal behaviors that are known to have ecological and evolutionary consequences.”
According to Wiki, oxazepam is a benzodiazepine used extensively since the 1960s for the treatment of anxiety and insomnia and in the control of symptoms of alcohol withdrawal.
Upon further research, the side effects of oxazepam may include dizziness, drowsiness, headache, memory impairment, paradoxical excitement, retrograde amnesia, but does not affect transient global amnesia. Side effects due to rapid decrease in dose or abrupt withdrawal from oxazepam may include abdominal and muscle cramps, convulsions, depression, inability to fall asleep or stay asleep, sweating, tremors, or vomiting.
Other reports, such as one by Michael Thomas of Idaho State University in Pocatello, and published in the scientific journal, PLoS ONE, states that low levels of antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs in water supplies can trigger the expression of genes associated with autism.
According to Thomas, this raises the possibility that pregnant women who drink water containing trace concentrations of these drugs will pass them along to the fetus. The fetus has a leaky blood-brain-barrier, which allows drugs to pass directly into the developing brain.
“The drugs affect activity of serotonin and other neurotransmitters, which are important in the development of neurological networks and, basically, affect how the brain is wired,” Thomas said.
In the newest research, fathead minnows were allowed to swim in a low-level cocktail of anti-epileptic drug carbamazepine and two selective serotonin uptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants, fluoxetine and venlafaxine. The minnows were exposed to the drugs for 18 days. It was found that the genes associated with autism in humans appeared to be significantly altered. Most of the genes involved are significant in early brain development and wiring.
So how do the drugs enter our bodies? Basically, the same way they exit. The cocktail of drugs enter our water system through those taking the drugs. And in the past 25 years, psychotropic drug use has increased dramatically. Around 80 per cent of each drug passes straight through the human body without being broken down. That waste water gets cycled through the municipal treatment plant then passes right back into the environment. In nearly all communities, water purification systems cannot filter out these pharmaceuticals. “They just fly right through,” says Thomas, which means they ultimately end up back in your tap water.
Read more at - http://zen-haven.com/dazed-and-confused-drugs-in-drinking-water/
Without knowing it, you are being medicated. Maybe even now you have a cup of coffee or tea in hand, filled with water compliments of your local municipal system. Think those sodas and energy drinks are any better? Think again. Unless the water is specifically filtered for pharmaceuticals, you’re still getting dosed.
There is an unhealthy cocktail of drugs in your drinking water.
Did you know with each sip, you self-medicate with anti-anxiety and even psychotropic drugs? That’s right, according to a report released this past week in Science, environmental pollution by pharmaceutical companies are a major threat to our world’s water supplies.
According to the study’s abstract;
“Here we show that a benzodiazepine anxiolytic drug (oxazepam) alters behavior and feeding rate of wild European perch (Perca fluviatilis) at concentrations encountered in effluent-influenced surface waters. Individuals exposed to water with dilute drug concentrations (1.8 micrograms liter–1) exhibited increased activity, reduced sociality, and higher feeding rate. As such, our results show that anxiolytic drugs in surface waters alter animal behaviors that are known to have ecological and evolutionary consequences.”
According to Wiki, oxazepam is a benzodiazepine used extensively since the 1960s for the treatment of anxiety and insomnia and in the control of symptoms of alcohol withdrawal.
Upon further research, the side effects of oxazepam may include dizziness, drowsiness, headache, memory impairment, paradoxical excitement, retrograde amnesia, but does not affect transient global amnesia. Side effects due to rapid decrease in dose or abrupt withdrawal from oxazepam may include abdominal and muscle cramps, convulsions, depression, inability to fall asleep or stay asleep, sweating, tremors, or vomiting.
Other reports, such as one by Michael Thomas of Idaho State University in Pocatello, and published in the scientific journal, PLoS ONE, states that low levels of antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs in water supplies can trigger the expression of genes associated with autism.
According to Thomas, this raises the possibility that pregnant women who drink water containing trace concentrations of these drugs will pass them along to the fetus. The fetus has a leaky blood-brain-barrier, which allows drugs to pass directly into the developing brain.
“The drugs affect activity of serotonin and other neurotransmitters, which are important in the development of neurological networks and, basically, affect how the brain is wired,” Thomas said.
In the newest research, fathead minnows were allowed to swim in a low-level cocktail of anti-epileptic drug carbamazepine and two selective serotonin uptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants, fluoxetine and venlafaxine. The minnows were exposed to the drugs for 18 days. It was found that the genes associated with autism in humans appeared to be significantly altered. Most of the genes involved are significant in early brain development and wiring.
So how do the drugs enter our bodies? Basically, the same way they exit. The cocktail of drugs enter our water system through those taking the drugs. And in the past 25 years, psychotropic drug use has increased dramatically. Around 80 per cent of each drug passes straight through the human body without being broken down. That waste water gets cycled through the municipal treatment plant then passes right back into the environment. In nearly all communities, water purification systems cannot filter out these pharmaceuticals. “They just fly right through,” says Thomas, which means they ultimately end up back in your tap water.
Read more at - http://zen-haven.com/dazed-and-confused-drugs-in-drinking-water/
