As conscientious, environmentally aware individuals we wouldn’t knowingly pollute our environment.  We are attentive to reducing our “footprint” on the environment and participate in recycling, utilize re-usable bags when shopping, and engage in other actions in order to protect our environment.  Yet many of us still pollute our environment regularly, without even realizing it.

 One of the largest category of pollutants being released into our water supply is prescription drugs (Doro-on, A. -2011- Risk Assessment for Water Infrastructure Safety and Security).  Most prescription drugs are eventually excreted from the body and wind up in our sewer system.  During the purification process, many of these drugs do not break down and wind up being discharged into our creeks, rivers and lakes, eventually finding themselves in our water table and drinking water supply.  This also is true for those on septic systems. 

Antidepressants and mood stabilizers as well as many other classes of drugs wind up being inadvertently discharged into our water supply.  If you drink water from any public water system without the water undergoing additional filtration (such as by distillation or reverse osmosis), you are probably exposing yourself to these pollutants.  These drugs when ingested can cause cancer, other physical disorders, as well as mental, emotional and behavioral disorders.  Children’s brains are particularly vulnerable to the effects of these pollutants.

In addition, if you are taking prescription medication, you are undoubtedly contributing to the pollution of our water supply.  I certainly am NOT suggesting that anybody decrease or stop taking the medication that their physician has prescribed for them without obtaining their doctor’s permission.  However, I AM saying that those who do everything possible to enhance their physical, mental and emotional health in order to minimize their use of prescription medications are not only contributing to their own health, but the health of the environment as well.

This also illustrates why I instruct all of my patients to “buy a filter, or be a filter”.  Either you purchase a water distiller or reverse osmosis machine (which are far more cost-effective over the long run, and easier on the environment, than using bottled water) to filter and purify your drinking water, or your liver and kidneys will wind up filtering and purifying that water (but not before the drugs have adversely affected your health).

So the action steps I am recommending is that you insure that you drink only purified water and other beverages made with purified water.  I am also advocating for everybody to adopt healthy diet and lifestyle choices in order to optimize your health and minimize your chances of needing prescription medication.  In future issues I will discuss more details about how to do that.

Dr. Mark Baxter is a local chiropractor who specializes in nutrition, healthy diet and lifestyle choices, detoxification, hormonal balance, bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, and neurotransmitter balance.