As we come to the end of Canada Water Week let's hope we do not end the concern, care and attention we need to give to this life giving resource. World Water Day is Tuesday March 22nd.
It is not uncommon to hear Cranbrook’s effluent described as ‘good enough to drink’. Well, I have yet to see any human drink it. The less discriminating cattle who have no option, do drink it as do many forms of wildlife no doubt.
An article in the magazine Horse Country came to my attention recently,
http://www.horsecountry.ca/documents/HoCo_1-2011_Hormones_and_Horses.pdf
and I couldn’t help but follow up with a little extra reading on the subject of PPCP’s.
Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products or PPCP’s form just one of the reasons some members of the population are very concerned about how we treat our wastewater and how we harvest our drinking water at the other end of the cycle. There is a growing body of evidence that there are more of these chemicals in both wastewater and our drinking water than we may have thought. The majority of wastewater treatments do not remove PPCP’s from the water and as a result what goes around comes around in the water we drink and the food we eat. Much scientific research is going on to show the effects of these varying concentrations in our water. Some of the results are not encouraging.
Both these sites make for more detailed reading.
http://www.ec.gc.ca/inre-nwri/default.asp?lang=En&n=C00A589F-1&offset=3&toc=show
http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/AssessingRisk/PPCP/index.cfm
We can be careful with the products we use. We can return unused medications to the pharmacy but with today’s use of medications, antibiotics, cleaning products and other chemicals it is going to take a concentrated effort on the part of individuals and governments to keep our drinking water and food supplies free from these contaminants.
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