Earth Day 2007: The Pill is Gone!

Environment News Service

Earth Day 2007: The Pill is Gone!

May 7, 2007

MARQUETTE, Michigan (ENS) — –> In an effort to protect drinking water and the Great Lakes, northern Michigan residents honored Earth Day by turning in tens of thousands of prescribed pills plus narcotics with an estimated street value of $500,000 during the third annual Earth Keeper Clean Sweep.

The 2007 Pharmaceutical Clean Sweep targeted out-of-date and unwanted medications of all kinds, according to Carl Lindquist, executive director of the Superior Watershed Partnership. More than a ton of pharmaceuticals and personal care products were turned in by the public.

About 2,000 people turned in items but the many had also collected pharmaceuticals from other family and friends, organizers said.

Since Earth Day 2005, the annual Earth Keeper Clean Sweeps have collected nearly 400 tons of hazardous waste for recycling or proper disposal. Federal officials say the projects have all set records for hazardous waste collections in the Great Lakes area, and are an important tool for protecting the environment.

The 2007 clean sweep went off without a hitch thanks to the U.P. chapter of the Michigan Pharmacists Association, and numerous law enforcement agencies including the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and Michigan Sheriff’s Association, organizers said.

Pharmacists and law enforcement officers were present at all collection sites to ensure security and proper collection of the pharmaceuticals, Lindquist said.

“This is what would have been a doctor’s traveling pharmacy,” said Marquette pharmacist Kent Jenema, showing a leather zippered case to an EPA observer. “This has a lot of old patent type medications from mostly natural sources that predates some of the pharmacy that we know today.”

The EPA and Lindquist said the clean sweep targeted medicines because trace amounts of pharmaceuticals are turning up in America’s rivers, lakes, and drinking water. Most treatment plants are not designed to filter out these medications.

When leftover and waste pharmaceuticals get flushed down drains, research is detecting them in lakes and rivers “at levels that could be causing harm to the environment and ecosystem,” said Elizabeth LaPlante, senior manager for the EPA Great Lakes National Programs Office in Chicago, Illinois.

“Specifically, reproductive and development problems in aquatic species, hormonal disruption and antibiotic resistance are some concerns associated with pharmaceuticals in our wastewater,” LaPlante said.

Lindquist said recent national studies show that over 80 percent of the rivers sampled “tested positive for a range of pharmaceuticals including antibiotics, birth control hormones, antidepressants, veterinary drugs and other medications.”

The pharmaceuticals collected in Michigan will be taken to an EPA-licensed incinerator at Veolia Environmental Services near St. Louis, Missouri.

The third annual Earth Keeper Clean Sweep was coordinated by the Superior Watershed Partnership and the Cedar Tree Institute, both Marquette environmental groups and the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community.

The project involves the congregations of over 140 churches and temples representing nine faith communities – Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, United Methodist Church, Unitarian Universalist, Baha’i, Jewish, and Zen Buddhist.

Reverend Jon Magnuson, Earth Keeper Initiative founder, said “one of the gifts that the faith community brings to the environmental movement is that the external damage done in the environment is a reflection of what is going on in the human condition, in the human heart – so as we heal and cleanse the Earth, we are also healing the human heart.”