If it isn't bad enough that things like antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones are getting into our drinking water, imagine what unseen damage could be happening.

First off, we might just now be starting to see traces of drugs from emissions from years ago. It takes many years for pollutants to work their way through the soil. And to make things that much more complicated, breakdown constituents can be MORE toxic that the original substance. PVC is a perfect example....it's almost inert when it's new, but after about 30 years, when it starts to degrade, the subsequent byproducts are highly toxic.

Now imagine this. What if we impatient people continue to put various substances into the environment until we do something that kills off soil microbes that help biodegrade the fall leaves? It wouldn't take long before we were up to our eyeballs in leaves. Without getting winded here, you can see that an unintended impact to any one of a number of organisms can have a terrible ripple effect.

I guess my take home message is that drugs are grossly over prescribed and when added to the waste stream, we need to look closely at what will happen to a synthesized substance when discarded into the environment where natural organisms can't recognize it and break it down.

If we're just starting to see the ramifications of something we did 20-30 years ago...what's still to come?