After years of resistance, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) appears ready to consider a relaxation of federal laws governing expired pharmaceuticals that have impeded national efforts to keep expired and unused pharmaceuticals out of water supplies. The shift coincided with the latest in a wave of scientific studies showing the crippling effects of these drugs on aquatic life.
Dr. Stevan Gressitt said the change was palpable at a recent Maine medical conference geared toward addressing the safe return of prescription drugs. Maine has the first statewide law requiring proper disposal of drugs, but DEA regulations have provided one of the biggest obstacles to implementation of the 2004 law.
The Maine law envisions a mail-back system by which citizens would return drugs to distributors via special, pre-paid mailers, but DEA regulations do not allow private citizens to mail narcotics. Federal law requires a DEA official present for both collection events and destruction of prescription drugs, which has further stymied local drug collection efforts.
“There’s no question that the DEA is tilting more favorably toward mailing from consumers as a policy,” Gressitt said.
For the moment, Gressitt, who organized the conference and has championed the state law, is uncharacteristically optimistic. “It’s a new world…a change for the positive.” DEA officials who attended the conference, as well as several of the nation’s pharmaceutical distributors made it clear they were ready to break down current barriers, according to Gressitt.
Proponents of the Maine law say that a Netflix approach to returning drugs via the mail will make proper drug disposal much easier for individuals, which means less of a chance old drugs could end up in the sewer and eventually, the river.
“Wherever you live, there’s a mailman,” Gressit said. “There isn’t a local AARP or hazardous waste disposal site everywhere.”
The change in DEA’s tone comes amid an almost daily flow of new scientific reports detailing the ill effects of drugs in the water and new evidence of those chemicals in New England waterways.
EPA recently provided the Maine DEP with an analysis of state water samples demonstrating levels of pharmaceuticals in virtually every site tested in the state. An identical survey by the EPA in Vermont showed similar results, and the analysis of Connecticut waterways is still pending.
One of these compounds was nonylphenol, a ubiquitous chemical found in pharmaceuticals as well as industrial detergents. A recent study of Jamaica Bay in New York found the chemical caused abnormalities in flounder populations and Stony Brooke University’s Dr. Anne McElroy, who led the study, said it is likely that population levels will drop as a result of continued contact with the chemical. Nonylphenol levels found in some of the Maine waters were high enough to cause similar biological effects, according to McElroy.
Studies like McElroy’s have prompted local groups to take matters into their own hands to find out what exactly is floating in their water. The Farmington River Watershed Association is privately funding a sampling by the U.S. Geological Survey to assess chemical levels in the watershed. In comparison to the EPA sampling of Connecticut waters, which tested for only six compounds, the USGS will look for 95 various chemicals, found in pharmaceuticals and personal care products from sunscreen to birth control. The FRWA expects its findings back from USGS within the month. The Connecticut DEP is still waiting for the EPA’s data, although DEP water quality official Ernie Pizzuto said he doesn’t put much stock in the results, given the samples are now more than two years old.
EPA scientists have acknowledged this issue remains a grass-roots movement and not a high priority within the agency. It will likely be many years before policy follows science and EPA moves to regulate levels of such chemicals in the nation’s waterways.
Drug Enforcement guidelines are just one hurtle in the race to get drugs out of waterways, working to remove these compounds during the sanitation process is another, and the debate over who pays for the cost of all this – government, patients, or drug companies – may be the biggest obstacle of all.
