The Dangerous Thing That's Ending Up In Your Drinking Water
You don’t want to leave old medication lying around—but flushing it down the toilet causes ecological problems. (Photo: Rebecca Becker/Eyeem/Getty)
It started with Vicodin. My daughter had wisdom teeth pulled and was sent home with a bottle. She only took three pills. How to get rid of the rest? I didn’t want anyone using it for “fun.”
“Don’t put it in the toilet,” I said.
“Why not? It’ll go away forever,” said her boyfriend, a future engineer.
“No,” says me. “It’ll go into the water we drink.” The internet proved me right; I put the Vicodin in the trash. I was stunned that these kids, who took AP Environmental Science, didn’t know that what you flush eventually becomes what you drink.
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This is why you shouldn’t flush pills and other toxins. Of the $230 billion worth of flushed drugs that reaches treatment plants each year, much of it ends up in our water, harming aquatic life and, later, us.
Parents know that with kids comes potty talk. You can shame kids with it and damage them. Or you can talk about it in a positive way. It’s the same with adults. If we don’t take responsibility for our waste, we hurt the earth and ourselves.
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If flushing meds isn’t right, neither is trashing them. In a landfill, that Vicodin can leech into soil. Instead, let pros incinerate it: The DEA’s website lists collection sites. But don’t flush it. What goes in, must come out. It’s the first rule of potty talk.
by Maria Rodale for Rodale’s Organic Life
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