Drugs, household chemicals are a risk ‘we haven’t fully begun to understand’

It’s a connection that few people make, but the medicines and personal care products that are part of daily life also are part of the Puget Sound pollution problem.

Collectively called pharmaceuticals and personal care products — PPCPs for short — those items contain thousands of chemicals which, when excreted from our bodies or washed off our hair and skin go down the drain and into the sewer or septic system.

And if the sewer system includes a wastewater treatment plant that dumps treated wastewater into Puget Sound, chances are those chemicals to some degree are polluting the Sound.

“There’s a big risk, but we haven’t fully begun to understand that risk,” said Melanie Redding, a state Department of Ecology hydrogeologist.

This much is known:

• Of the 10,500 chemicals used in personal care products such as shampoo, sunscreen, toothpaste and lipstick, only 11 percent are tested for their toxic effects by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

• One-third of all personal care products contain at least one known cancer-causing agent.

• Many of the chemicals act like hormones and have the ability to alter the reproductive systems of fish and cause birth defects.

“We’re finding them everywhere — in groundwater, wastewater, in our bodies and the breast milk of mothers,” Redding said. “This is all fairly depressing.”

Redding said Ecology is in the early stages of coming to grips with the water quality problems associated with PPCPs. The next step will be a monitoring plan to figure out how prevalent PPCP chemicals are in the environment.

She said conventional wastewater treatment plants break down only about 10 percent to 12 percent of the medicinal and personal care chemicals that end up in the sewer. The treatment rate can jump to more than 90 percent when solids at the treatment plant are retained in the treatment process for five days to 15 days, she said.
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