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Environmental Hazards and ChildrenDiscarded Drugs: A Hidden Danger at Your Water Tap!
We would never give our children prescription or non-prescription medications to take at will - and yet it seems that is just what many of us have been doing all along!
Environmentalist parents unite! Remember the ‘70’s? Most everyone united to save the planet and that decade saw the establishment of many environmental groups we know today such as the Natural Heritage Network and Greenpeace. The out-spring of such groups is a wealth of common knowledge of what we can on an individual level to keep our children and the planet safe. It is a sort of dowry for our children to preserve our natural resources and to then teach our children how to do so themselves. Due to the bombardment of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, and the plethora of other information out there, I thought I was doing all I could. I was wrong! How many of you store cleaning products under the sink still? No? Do you keep your medications high and out of reach of your children? Yes? What if I tell you the children are taking your medication – and that of others – and do so everyday of their lives? When faced with expired or unused medications, what do you do with them? To protect my family, I flushed mine down the toilet. In that way they were not in a bag where pets and children could get into them and be accidentally poisoned. What I didn’t know is that I was inadvertently poisoning my children – and my grandchildren – and yours! Medications flushed into the sewage system are unable to be removed from wastewater! Executive director Kevin Shafer, of the Milwaukee Sewage District stated: “…medicines flushed end up going through the plant and into Lake Michigan.” Wastewater plants cannot remove all the medication from the water! This includes all over the counter medications such as pain relievers and allergy medications, etc. Living inland is not a reason to ignore this warning – the medications will still remain in your drinking water! Think of it in this way: Take a glass of water; now put in a pain reliever or two, a little bit of household cleaner and some paper for good measure. The only thing the wastewater plant can remove in its entirety is the paper. Would you drink that glass of water? What can we do?
The copyright of the article Environmental Hazards and Children in Early Childhood is owned by Connie Newbauer. Permission to republish Environmental Hazards and Children in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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