Funny links!
Sorry friends if I am intruding to spoil your fun. If it were not a serious matter, the links to webpages like <i>Organic Consumers Association</i> and <i>"Rachel website"</i>, would have been a source of fun and laughter. Who's in chage of "Rachel"? Peter Montagu, reknown scaremonger, famous for his unscientific stance when it comes to environmental issues. The fun is gone when you see how the matter of infinitesimal amounts of drugs found in the wastes is used to push political agendas. Don't think so? Read:
Quote from Organic Consumers Association: <i>"The concentrations, however, <b>were near the limits of detection, a few parts per trillion</b>. Moreover, he found that running this water through an activated-carbon filter removes all vestiges of the drugs"</i>.
Besides giving a proof of the efficiency of activated-carbon filters, the statement does not supply nothing new --at least for those who knows something about the matter. If man had the means of performing chemical analysis in sludge and residue waters back in the past centuries, he would have discovered that they were full of the medicins used those days, specifically, arsenic, mercury, belladona, and other highly toxic substances. These concentrations, however, doesn't seem to have played a damaging role in human health then or today. <b>Or perhaps it did?</b> Maybe as those substances were being replaced by modern medicines and antibiotics, the health of people started to improve. This argument has the same validity as the one that states the present levels of drugs in residues have an effect on humans. If this is the case (highly improbable) the replacement of toxic compunds by antibiotics and other safe compounds has been proven useful.
But I wonder, who are the people who go to sewage-treatment plants and drink the water there, so they can get contaminated? The clear waters from sewage-treatment plants go to rivers, where they get diluted to an astronomically small concentration. If right at the sewage plant the concentrations found are in the <b>trillionths per parts"</b> (near the limits of detection, according to the link), what is the concentration found in the river one mile down? It escapes the limits of detection. <b>It is non-existant</b>. Perhaps a few molecules by cubic meter.
Let us go a step further. The link asys: <i>"... reports finding a broad mix of drugs, including anticancer agents, psychiatric drugs, and anti-inflammatory compounds. 'Levels of prescription drugs that we have leaving sewage-treatment plants in Canada are sometimes higher than what's being seen in Germany,' he says."</i> . Well, it seems then that drinking water directly from the sewage-treatment plants would give you protection from cancer, depression, and inflammatory diseases. I wouldn't reccommend it, though. Those studies would have made a better use of the money if they looked for <i>E-coli</i> and <i>cholera</i> bacteriae, or <i>eskytosomiasis</i> or <i>ankylostomiasis</i> parasites (hook worm), hystolitic amoebas and other nasty things.
But do you know why they didn't look for these? Because those analysis are already being performed, on a routine basis, by the sewage treatment plants. But never let the people know this. Better make people think they are being poisoned by "callous corporations".
<b>Quote from the links:</b> <i>"Now new studies by Chris Metcalfe of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Geochemist Mike Meyer of the U.S. Geological Survey in Raleigh, N.C., and his colleagues have begun looking for antibiotics in hog-waste lagoons."</i> . I really wonder if there is somebody bathing ar drinking water from hog-waste lagoons! These studies should have been published in the <b>National Lampoon</b> instead. Or MAD magazine.
<b>Quote:</b> <i>"The same three antibiotics, which are also prescribed for people, often appear in local waters..."</I> Good! Now you can cure your gonorrhea by drinking water from your home faucets!
<b>Quote:</b> <i>"It's because these relatively costly technologies aren't employed for treating sewage, he notes, that a large share of the drugs flushed down toilets can reach open waters.</i> That makes me wonder if they made test on waters for all the marihuana and cocaine flushed down toilets during police raids. Maybe we can get high drinking from open waters?
But what did not surprise me at all was finding the following at the bottom of the links: <i>Please support our work, <b>send a tax-deductible donation</b> to OCA </i>, and <i>You could help by making a tax-deductible contribution (anything you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00). Please send your tax-deductible contribution to: Environmental Research Foundation</i> They make fortunes from scaring people with unproven theories and imaginary risks.
Finally, Peter Montagu says: <i>"When a human or an animal is given a drug, anywhere from 50% to 90% of it is excreted unchanged. The remainder is excreted in the form of metabolites.</i> So don't give medicines to humans or animals. Let them die.
<i>"We should assume that anything we do will have negative consequences on the rest of the planet. We must limit our technological interventions into nature long before we have definitive scientific proof of harm. This is the principle of precautionary action, and if we don't adopt it, nature will get along just fine without us". --<b>Peter Montague</b> (National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO) </i> if Montague hates mankind so much, he should stop his vain efforts in educating people and let nature work its way on that hideous species.
The morale Montague has always preached is: "Stop progress, go back to the Golden Days of the 18th Century. Let us kill as many men as possible, so there will be comfortable room for the remainders". Good. He should give the example and lead the way. <b>Let's begin with him.</b>
