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Medications in public wastewater focuses need for better safeguards

Mental Floss – “A new study reveals that most of the high concentrations of pharmaceuticals in wastewater don’t come from people flushing their meds willy-nilly down the toilet, as New Scientist reports. Rather, we are flushing meds through our bodies into the sewers.  In a new study in Science of the Total Environment, scientists collected wastewater from the University of Vermont over 10 days while students were moving out at the end of the school year. The result didn’t show a massive spike in drug concentrations in the water, indicating that when students moved out, they weren’t dumping all their pills into the toilet…After the students (and their pee supply) left, the water had higher concentrations of antidepressants, diabetes drugs, and ulcer medications (from local population).

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