Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
This episode, we’re asking, when you flush your unused or expired medication down the toilet, do they actually disappear?
We had Minjun Kim and Merissa Underwood from our Possibly Team look into this.
Minjun Kim: Hey, Megan!
Merissa Underwood: Hi!
Megan Hall: Now tell me, should I be worried about medicine in the waste water system when I flush it down the toilet?
Minjun Kim: Good question—A lot of us flush medicine down the toilet when we’re done with it. It's easy to think that it just disappears.
Megan Hall: But that’s not the case?
Merissa Underwood: So it turns out it’s more complicated than that. We talked to an expert to learn more.
Thomas Boving: My name is Dr. Thomas Boving. I'm a hydrogeologist at the University of Rhode Island. My research is focused on emerging contaminants with pharmaceutical and personal care products.
Minjun Kim: Thomas says that actually, your medication gets into our wastewater no matter what.
Thomas Boving: Humans basically excrete about half, somewhere between forty, sixty percent, depending on the medication, of that medication passes through the body unchanged.
Megan Hall: Is he saying our medication gets into the water when we go to the bathroom?
Minjun Kim: Yeah! So even if you don’t flush your unused medicine, you’d still be releasing some of it down the toilet.
Merissa Underwood: But Thomas says that’s not a huge problem, at least not here in the United States.
Thomas Boving: In the United States, it’s not on the radar so much because generally speaking, the concentration of pharmaceuticals in the wastewater are fairly low.
Megan Hall: So, we don’t need to worry?
Merissa Underwood: Well, Thomas says there’s still a lot we don’t know. Especially about what happens when different types of drugs interact with each other when they combine in the wastewater..
Thomas Boving: You take a certain medication, your neighbor has a different one, so we end up with complex mixtures of pharmaceuticals, and the interactions between these pharmaceuticals is very little understood.
Minjun Kim: But there’s one thing that scientists do know- people who use septic systems or well water are more vulnerable to this issue.
Thomas Boving: There is a direct input of medication into the groundwater, via the septic systems. If you live down gradient, you pump that water. So in other words, your sick neighbor can dose you with whatever medication they have.
Megan Hall: But, most of us don’t use wells anymore, anyway, right?
Merissa Underwood: More people than you might think! More than 40 million Americans get their drinking water from private wells, and about a quarter of US households are still on septic.
Minjun Kim: And it’s hard to gauge how big a problem this is. Those private wells aren’t regulated by the EPA. So one study of those wells on Cape Cod found levels of pharmaceuticals way higher than public drinking water supplies.
Megan Hall: Does that mean that everyone with a well should worry about this issue?
Minjun Kim: Luckily, this doesn't affect everyone who uses a well. It comes down to how close together the properties are.
Merissa Underwood: So Thomas says that in places where wells and septic systems are far apart, the soil usually has time to filter out these pharmaceuticals before it reaches anyone else’s wells. But when these private wells are closer together, it might not.
Megan Hall: So what can we do to address this issue?
Minjun Kim: Well, we can’t stop taking medications. But, Thomas says we can avoid putting more medication into the system than we need to. And that comes back to the stuff still sitting in your cabinet.
Merissa Underwood: When you have medications leftover, don’t throw them in the trash or flush them.
Minjun Kim: Instead, locate your nearest medication drop box. They’re often found in pharmacies or police stations, and you can dispose of them there on your next visit. There’s almost 60 of these just in Rhode Island.
Megan Hall: Got it! Thank you, Minjun and Merissa!
That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the ways your choices affect our planet, at ask possibly dot org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on social media at “ask possibly”
Possibly is a co-production of Brown University's Institute for Environment and Society, Ocean State Media and WBRU.
