Water quality is seriously impacted by the millions of gallons of prescription medicines that are dumped or peed into our toilets. Most water treatment systems cannot effectively remove these medications and that is why the County of Alameda has made the pharmaceutical industry liable to take back unused drugs so that they do not wind up in our water systems.Apparently the Supreme Court agrees with Alameda that the drug companies have to fund and manage drug take back programs. The court allowed a local ordinance to stand which make pill makers pay for drug disposal.
I worked with Long Beach early on to develop a program with Memorial Medical Center. But the fact remains the Long Beach program is only done once a year and people have medicines they need to dispose of year round.
Long Beach Health Department should now step up and develop a program with the pharmaceutical industry to get rid of unused medication. Meanwhile, please do not flush your pills down the toilet.. You can put them in a coffee can and place wet coffee grounds on top of them. It will destroy them and you can tape the top of the can and place in the garbage.
