- Pacific
(NaturalNews) Several major reports have come out in recent years about the dangers of
pharmaceutical drug residues being found in the nation's water supplies. But a new study
has shown that major American food crops like soybeans are also absorbing these chemicals,
and others, from the treated wastewater that farmers are applying to them.
It is common practice for large-scale farm operations to dump billions of gallons of
treated sewage and other recycled water on crops to help fertilize them. But this
semi-treated water still contains
chemical components from drugs,
creams, lotions, shampoos and other consumer products, all of which end up in the
soil.
A research team from the University of Toledo in Ohio decided to test whether or not major
U.S. food crops were capable of
absorbing these chemicals in
real-life agricultural conditions, so they performed an experiment on soybeans, the second most-widely grown
crop in the U.S.
After giving the plants water tainted with three pharmaceutical components and two
antimicrobial compounds from personal care products,
the team observed that one of the pharmaceutical drugs and both antimicrobial compounds
concentrated heavily in the plants' roots, eventually making their way into the stems and
leaves. The other two chemicals absorbed somewhat, but not as much as the others.
"The first thing you have to consider with human exposure [to chemicals] through
agriculture is whether it's even possible," explained Chad Kinney, an environmental
chemist from Colorado State University in Pueblo. "That's what was answered by this
study."
According to Chenxi Wu, the study lead, these chemicals could "accumulate through the
food chain, and eventually end up in
human consumers." (8.13.2010, by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer) http://www.naturalnews.com/z029462_food_crops_toxins.html
Sources for this story include:
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/88/i32...
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