Originally Posted by Malkavian

It shows up 'cause nobody ever bothered to remove it... At part per trillion levels, even detection is difficult, not to mention purification at huge scales required for water treatment. As for effects over decades, how would you separate that from regular aging? OK, grandpa over a course of seven decades will become grandma thanks to estrogen contamination... Unless he's taking loads of Viagra (and therefore contributes to the problem to begin with), by then he won't care anyway.

For two or more drugs to come together at part per trillion dose and have a significant effect, i think you have higher chance of being killed by a terrorist... Article has it wrong - the reason drugs are not delivered through drinking water is not because of cocktail dangers, but rather the reverse - drugs are horribly inefficient. Only a small fraction reaches the intended target (that's how you get the rest in your water supply). You need major overdoses to get any effect.

That said, it is possible for some drugs to have negative effects on their own... Like the chemotherapy ones, because those are designed to kill cells in human bodies. But again, it comes down to the levels... Killing cells is not a particularly bad thing, depends on how many and where.