Pharmaceuticals are now being consumed and flushed down the toilet in such huge quantities that they've become a threat to the environment. The synthetic chemicals that make up modern medicines end up in the toilet in two different ways: 1) By passing through the body of the patient taking them. 2) Being flushed down the toilet as a way of disposing them. Pharmaceutical companies actually encourage people to flush unused or "expired" drugs down the toilet to get rid of them. (This encourages the sales of more, newer drugs.) The EPA has begun to study this problem, and initial testing has found pharmaceuticals and personal care product chemicals in 80 percent of the rivers in the United States. Nearly all municipal water supplies are also contaminated with detectable levels of antidepressants, painkillers and HRT drugs, and water treatment facilities have no method of removing such chemicals. Pharmaceuticals no doubt play a role in the "dead zones" now being found in the ocean, usually where rivers empty into ocean waters. The bottom line is that pharmaceuticals are a threat to the environment. Drug companies, of course, pretend this problem doesn't exist. They hope that if they ignore it long enough, the problem will go away. The public is just barely waking up to this enormous new threat to personal and planetary health, and at this point, few people have connected to the dots between skyrocketing pharmaceutical consumption and accelerating ecological harm. I chose to highlight this issue in this CounterThink cartoon by imagining that terrorists might try to poison the water supply by urinating in it after taking prescription medications. Poisoning the water supply, of course, is one of the default terrorism schemes often mentioned in fiction novels, Hollywood movies or official anti-terrorism plans. From a terrorist's point of view, the water supply is a smart target because a single point of contamination can impact potentially millions of people. The distribution system is already in place, and lots of people still drink water from the tap (I have no idea why, but they do). I regretfully used the typical "terrorist" clothing here only as a way to create a visual connection with the expectation of terrorism in the minds of most Americans. The truth is, terrorists don't really dress like they just walked out of a Middle Eastern desert. Most terrorists wear business suits, and if you define a terrorist as someone who engages in the harm or the threat of harm of human beings in order to achieve a political goal, then the worst terrorists of all are the politicians running the FDA, who have indirectly killed over half a million Americans since 9/11 by using tools of terrorism: Threats, intimidation, disinformation, censorship and worse. (It's all part of the FDA's effort to silence the truth about the healing power of nutrition and herbs while pushing a pro-pharma agenda that kills Americans while enriching drug companies.) Speaking of terrorists, dumping fluoride into public water supplies is an act of terrorism, too. In any sane world, it would be a violation of federal law, but in the United States and many other countries, dumping a known toxic chemical into the water supply is somehow considered part of some "public safety" program. It's interesting to note that the chemical used in fluoridation -- fluorosilicic acid -- is a toxic waste product collected by the pollution scrubbing devices used in chemical fertilizer production processes. It is an EPA-registered hazardous waste chemical, and it's illegal to dump it into any water supply unless, of course, it is falsely labeled "fluoride" and dripped into municipal water supplies at the behest of crazed dentists who have, for decades, claims that poisoning the population with fluorosilicic acid somehow reduces cavities. Real terrorists are no threat at all compared to what conventional dentists, doctors and ignorant public health officials do to harm the U.S. population through mass fluoridation practices (which should really just be called what they are: Attempts at chemical genocide). If our nation were really interested in fighting a war against terrorism, we should first arrest all the people dumping poisons into our water supply, don't you think? And guess what? Those people aren't dressed in sand rags. They're white, upper-income Americans who wear business suits and claim -- with a straight face -- that exposing the public (including babies, infants and the elderly) to known toxic chemicals is good for their teeth. Any real fight against terrorism should start by rounding up the pro-fluoride dentists, doctors and bureaucrats and charging them with crimes against humanity. Or, better yet, punishing them by making them drink the same chemicals they've been making everybody else drink: Lock 'em up and spike their water with high levels of fluorosilicic acid, just to give them a literal dose of their own medicine. We'd all be a lot safer with these people off the streets anyway, and if this chemical is as safe as they all claim it to be, they shouldn't be harmed by drinking it, right? In any case, the bottom line on this issue is that your drinking water is simply not safe for human consumption. Add up all the chlorine, rocket fuel chemicals, pharmaceuticals, fluoride and all the other chemicals and heavy metals found in the water, and you have a recipe for widespread mental problems: Learning disabilities, insanity, passive / aggressive behavior, depression and much more. It's no coincidence that if you take a look around the United States these days, this is what you see among the population. Apparently, too many people are still drinking the water. America is headed for a health care implosion. It wouldn't be the first time a civilization was nearly brought to its knees by poisons in the water, by the way. Remember lead poisoning in the aqueducts that poisoned Rome and brought down the Roman Empire? The American Empire seems near its final days, too, and we're so stupid today that we actually consciously ADD poison to the water (at least in Rome it was an accident). The American Empire will ultimately be one of the shortest-lived in world history, and when future historians look back at what went wrong, they'll no doubt take a very close look at the water supply and wonder how the American leaders could so blatantly allow the waters to be poisoned with medications, industrial chemicals and toxic additives. The America we know today will make absolutely no sense to people living a hundred years from now... assuming there's anybody who survives the toxic chemical onslaught of 1950 - 2050. Be warned: Don't drink the water around here. Filter it or buy it bottled, but don't swallow all the chemicals that governments and corporations are trying to shove down your throat. And if you're interested in actually protecting the planet and saving the environment, don't consume medications. They're poison in your body, and they're poison in the environment. You cannot be pro-environment and taking prescription drugs at the same time. The two are mutually exclusive. If you really want to protect the environment, get off your meds!