Eating medicine daily without knowing

Do you realize that you are taking medicine everyday without knowing? If not, perhaps you can try to read http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=pharmed-fish-09-03-26

The news is about the research that discovers the presence of medicine in fishes. In fact, there has been many researches establishing the presence of medicine in our food and drink chain. I remembered reading the findings about the presence of medicine in drinking water in US.

The fact I know are:
1. Whatever drugs you take, they are not totally absorbed by our body. Some will go down the drain via our urine or feces.
2. We can only detect what we know.

The sewerage system worldwide (good or bad) interacts with the environment and in many places, waste water (including urine) is treated to produce drinking water. The main issues are that unless there are specific compound to remove, chances are that noone knows how to remove them. Ozone, UV and whatever treatment given to waste water will not take away residual medicine in water. Medicinal residue in the soil going up to the plants (from even the so called organic plantation), will definitely end up in our kitchen. Even if you say that the soil is organic, there is no way to ensure the water is free from all unwanted residues. In short, our food and drink chain has become so entertwined that everything is linked. The amount of possible residues are also so many that it is virtually impossible to track.

Not trying to be pessimistic, I think we need to realistically accept the fact that we will be taking some of the unwanted medicinal residue. Chances are that the residue is in small amount after being diluted so many times, unless everyone use the same medicine at the same time! So, perhaps it is least likely that anything harm will come to us mainly because of taking those residues. The risk of dying from accident on the way to work or choking on fish bones may actually be higher. Nevertheless, there is no zero risk in this world and most of the time, it is really your perception that matters.

Edit: 28 March 2009
Guess what I have just read. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090326100714.htm

The article reported a finding that bottles of drinking water in Germany releases xenohormone, that is chemical that has hormone-like effect. Worse, the chemical behaves like estrogen, primary female sex hormone... the hormone promote some female characteristics, not so fun to have that in male, definitely...

This finding reflect exactly the fear on how much unwanted chemicals have entered human lives unknowingly. I wonder how safe glass bottle is as well.