{"id":15280,"date":"2018-04-12T14:47:44","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T19:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=15280"},"modified":"2018-04-12T14:47:44","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T19:47:44","slug":"either-better-dosages-or-no-drugs-for-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/04\/12\/either-better-dosages-or-no-drugs-for-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Either Better Dosages Or No Drugs For Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guardian<\/strong><\/em> notes<\/a> that our effluvia is choking our support systems:<\/p>\n

River systems around the world are coursing with over-the-counter and prescription drugs waste which harms the environment, researchers have found.<\/p>\n

If trends persist, the amount of pharmaceutical effluence leaching into waterways could increase by two-thirds before 2050, scientists told the European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cA large part of the freshwater ecosystems is potentially endangered by the high concentration of pharmaceuticals,\u201d said Francesco Bregoli, a researcher at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education<\/a> in the Netherlands, and leader of an international team that developed a method for tracking drug pollution \u201chotspots\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For an engineer, this sounded interesting.<\/p>\n

Bregoli and his team developed a computer model to predict current and future pharma pollution based on criteria such as population densities, sewage systems and drugs sales.<\/p>\n

They compared the results to data gathered from 1,400 spot measurements of diclofenac toxicity taken from around the world. Most of the data points were in Europe and North America.<\/p>\n

Pollution<\/a> levels are likely to be substantially higher in much of Latin America, Africa and Asia where less than a quarter of waste water is treated, and with technology unable to filter out most pharmaceuticals.<\/p>\n

Technology alone cannot solve the problem, said Bregoli.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need a substantial reduction in consumption,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lots of options for reducing consumption, but none are all that attractive.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Clean the water.<\/li>\n
  2. Take fewer drugs.<\/li>\n
  3. Stop issuing drugs.<\/li>\n
  4. Reduce the population which may take drugs.<\/li>\n
  5. Reduce the population.<\/li>\n
  6. Find ways to better regulate dosages so that less excess – much less excess – is shed by the patients.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Neither do they seem all that likely to occur in the short-term, except, sadly, #5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Guardian notes that our effluvia is choking our support systems: River systems around the world are coursing with over-the-counter and prescription drugs waste which harms the environment, researchers have found. If trends persist, the amount of pharmaceutical effluence leaching into waterways could increase by two-thirds before 2050, scientists told \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15281,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15280\/revisions\/15281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}