Roden, Nicholas Michael. The cumulative risk of pharmaceuticals in New Jersey surface water to human health. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3C24V3D
DescriptionSurface water in New Jersey is used to supply many residential drinking water facilities. In the surface water, there are contaminants from industrial and residential sources, one set of these contaminants being pharmaceuticals. This research looks at the concentrations of 18 pharmaceuticals in 30 locations in New Jersey, their acceptable daily exposures, and potential drug-drug interactions. The surface water sampling and analytical concentration determination was done by United States Geological survey (USGS) personnel according to their protocols and analyzed in a USGS laboratory. Acceptable daily exposures (ADE) for human health were set for each pharmaceutical in the study. Each pair of pharmaceuticals was researched for known adverse health interactions and their potential impact on human health was quantified. This interaction factor ranged from 0.4 times to 5.0 times the adverse effect, as measured in some cases by plasma levels in man. These factors were brought together using a cumulative hazard index risk assessment calculation to assess the overall risk of pharmaceuticals in surface water to human health. The cumulative risk was assessed for each of the 30 sample locations, and none reached the level of human health concern. When including the potential from drug-drug interactions in the assessment, the risk did increase but not an appreciable amount. The Hazard Index (HI) for the sample locations ranged from <0.00001 to 0.01 with the drug-drug interaction (DDI) only adding less than 1.2 times increase to the overall risk. When the simulation of these mixtures was extended to an extreme for drug-drug interactions, 7 times a noticeable increase in the calculated risk was seen, but in no cases did the risk in any of the sample locations reach a level of concern.