for drugs and beauty products.

(link...)

Pam Strickland

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." ~Kurt Vonnegut

I recall speaking with KUB officials on this about a year ago. They said they were aware of it as an evolving issue, concerned about it, but still studying to see if testing would be beneficial here. Within Knox County, we don't have as much of a "closed loop" system as other places. Our waste effluent goes back to the Tennessee / Fort Loudon, and our intake is upstream near the Forks of the River, where it is (presumably) fresh water. The communities in the FB/H watershed aren't large enough to dump measurable amounts of pharms in our water source.

That's not to say that pharms on our effluent isn't affecting downstream communities that might be using Fort Loudon. A little public education about how to properly dispose of unused pharms would be a good thing.

Oh, and if you're on septic, don't dump your antibiotics down the sink/potty. That would be really bad. :)

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Fighting for Reform and Representation, Fourth District
Steve Drevik, Commission Seat 4-B
(link...)

From EPA is to return unused drugs to the pharmacy for disposal. I called the local Walgreens and they don't accept them- they recommend adding water to the bottle to dissolve the pills, remove the label, then throw them in the trash. They'll just end up in the landfill leachate eventually, but that's probably better than the river.

CVS is piloting a return program, but not yet rolled out.

EPA suggests that they can be turned into regular hazardous waste pickup points as well (e.g., 1033 Elm Street, corner of Baxter & Elm).

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Fighting for Reform and Representation, Fourth District
Steve Drevik, Commission Seat 4-B
(link...)

This is, to a certain point, a measurement issue. They've never been able to measure it before since the amounts involved were too small; 1 ppm or even 1 ppt. ppm = parts per million and ppt = parts per trillion. Not only wasn't the technology there to do it but also the cost (some of these tests aren't cheap, or easy, to do) and there's also the fact that until fairly recently no one knew they should test for them.

Take Care, Be Good and don't play in the street!

SteveMule

I thought I read recently that Tennesseans take more prescription drugs than the national average, so I was searching the News Sentinel through NewsBank (courtesy of the Knox County Public Library) for the article when this popped up:

PILLS FOR FUEL
Knoxville News Sentinel (TN) - July 28, 2007
Don’t be so quick to throw out that expired blood pressure medication. Drug disposal companies are taking outdated or recalled prescription drugs from pharmacies and manufacturers and incinerating them, generating energy.

Capital Returns Inc. last year created enough energy to power more than 220 homes for a year. To do that, it incinerated 6.5 million pounds of pills and other pharmaceuticals.

The Environmental Protection Agency encourages local drug-collection programs to limit the amount of medication that makes it into the water supply, said Ben Grumbles, the EPA’s assistant administrator for water. Studies have shown adverse effects on fish, though nothing has been shown to harm humans, he said.

I love my library card!

This is a serious problem and is another consequence of our prescription drug epidemic. Somehow we have become convinced that we no longer have to confront our problems but simply take a pill to not handle the problem but hide the symptoms.

As the director of Novus Medical Detox, I daily see the ravages caused by prescription drug addiction created by doctors prescribing it to their patients and then the patients either continuing to obtain it or purchasing these drugs on the internet or the street. Probably the worst of these drugs is OxyContin--legal heroin.

Pain is real. I have had to deal with it much of my life first from polio and then from two surgeries. However, there are alternatives to painkillers and they must be tried first. Let's not treat the symptoms but the cause.

Prescription drug addiction is an epidemic and we must do everything we can to stop it before it overwhelms us. Education is a must. Detox and rehab are the only solutions for people who are addicted and have decided that they must change their lives.

We also have to properly dispose of the drugs that we clean out of our medicine cabinets.

Steve Hayes
(link...)

In some cases it may be best to offer them to someone else. A story my wife related (she's the medical pro in the family) was of a patient she had who'd lost her husband to cancer, leaving behind thousands of dollars of unused prescriptions. As it turned out, a member of their church was also on the same meds, and passing them on meant helping someone in a costly situation.

It may not be strictly legal. I don't know. But it seems like a good idea. Maybe there should be a Second Harvest type of vehicle.
~m.

Pharmacists provide an expiration date of one year, no matter what the expiration date of the original container may indicate (which may be substantially longer). One year from dispensation is the rule.
~m.