Drugs may recycle through water

By Mary Manning (contact)

Friday, June 16, 2000 | 10:50 a.m.

The U.S. Geological Survey has taken its first two samples from Las Vegas waters to look for traces of drugs that get into the nation's waters from treated sewage, a federal hydrologist said.

The sampling effort in Las Vegas Wash and Lake Mead's Las Vegas Bay is part of a nationwide effort to determine what happens to prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals once they get into water supplies, Bob Boyd of the USGS said Thursday.

Las Vegas Wash funnels runoff and wastewater from the Las Vegas Valley into Lake Mead, which provides most of the valley's drinking water.

Analysis of the samples are expected later this year.

The USGS is looking for about 20 compounds, including estrogens and other hormones, as well as medications and pesticides that may travel through the valley's waste water, Boyd said.

The first evidence of pharmaceuticals in Las Vegas water came in 1998 after the Sunrise Landfill broke open. Scientists found surface water near the landfill had traces of over-the-counter and prescription drugs, he said.

Such drugs also have shown up in increasing amounts in samples taken from surface waters in other urban areas that have been tested, he said.

Scientists suspect the drugs could affect wildlife, but impacts on people who drink the water are also possible.

"Long-term exposure to low concentrations might have health effects," Boyd said of the work in progress.

Current water treatment does not remove drugs from water, he noted.

There is little information to find out whether there is a problem, Nevada Division of Environmental Protection Administrator Alan Biaggi said at the Lake Mead Water Quality Forum in Henderson on Thursday.

"It's very much an emerging issue," Biaggi said.

Studies on drugs in water are just beginning in the United States. British and German researchers have been studying antibiotics, anti-depressants, pesticides and ingredients from shampoos, suntan lotions and perfumes in rivers and lakes for about 10 years.

British scientists discovered that estrogen from birth control pills is intensified after sewage treatment.

Food producers' research shows anti-depressants increase production of mussels and oysters.

Las Vegas has been part of USGS national studies of water quality for about 10 years. In earlier studies, the agency discovered sex changes from possible endocrine disruption in carp in Lake Mead and pesticides and insecticides in Las Vegas Wash waters. They have not determined what causes the endocrine disruption.

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