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« Protecting our children shouldn't be this difficult | Main | Under fire »
February 25, 2008
Not a drop to drink--Part 1: Down the drain
With droughts parching extensive tracts of land from the Southeast to the Western states, worries over future water shortages sound ever louder and more urgent. Yet few of us actually imagine the bleak look of a world where water may be rationed, sold to the highest bidder or distributed by the government between various competing needs.
Is this future unavoidable? Will water shortages and water conflicts shape our lives – or do we actually have enough clean drinking water to last for a while if only we take good stewardship of our water resources?
Let’s talk for a moment about the daily shower. We all enjoy it; we take it for granted; we take offense when someone does not share our views on the necessity of it. Nobody wants to stand in a crowded bus next to a person who considers hygiene to be a matter of personal preference.
However, as we hurry through our morning routine (4 minutes and 56 seconds for the shower before gulping a cup of coffee), do we even consider how the chemicals that we send flowing down the drain may endanger our future sources of drinking water?
Research by EWG demonstrated that on average, each of us uses around 10 cosmetics or personal care products daily, most of which end up in wastewater. In combination, daily use of shampoo, soap, conditioner, toothpaste, body lotion, shaving cream, sunscreen, and deodorant exposes people’s skins to an average of 126 distinct chemical ingredients.
But the story does not stop there. Many of the long-lasting, biologically active ingredients in personal care products aren't filtered out in standard wastewater treatment plants, whose processes were never specifically intended to remove synthetic chemicals. And so, while the effluent from wastewater treatment facilities may be free from live bacteria, it still carries significant quantities of bioactive compounds, such as hormone-disrupting chemicals phthalates, bisphenol A and triclosan (for more information, see EWG's report on Sources of Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals in San Francisco Bay).
Another example of a very persistent chemical in personal care products is galaxolide, a synthetic musk that is used to impart fragrance to consumer products such as detergents, household cleaners, shampoos, and cosmetics, often in order to hide undesirable odors of other ingredients in the same item. Synthetic musks are labeled as “fragrance”; their identity, quantity or composition is generally not disclosed by cosmetics manufactures.
Galaxolide is resistant to removal from wastewater. It bioaccumulates in tissues, and, together with other synthetic musks, galaxolide is found at high levels in breast milk of US mothers. The toxicology of polycyclic musks is not well established, but these chemicals cause endocrine disruption in animals; they may also enhance toxicity of other compounds.
So, let us visualize the journey of water after it arrives to our homes. Water comes from the tap, gets filled with various persistent chemicals whose safety has not been adequately demonstrated, is flushed down the drain and moves where?
In old times of low population density and “water-rich” mentality, this wastewater could be, perhaps, released to the ocean. Now, as water scarcity comes upon us, recycling of wastewater becomes both a desirable and an unavoidable option. We need to make sure that recycled water is as clean as it can be. An important step towards this goal is minimizing the flow-through of long-lasting, bioaccumulative chemicals that come from personal care products. For more on that, stay tuned for Part 2.
UPDATE: This post was initially written as the first in a series, but shortly after it was published The Pump Handle wrote a post that said most of what we planned to say. If you're interested in the subject, check out their "What's in your sewage?"