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Everything that gets washed down the drain has some sort of effect downstream. This is true for medicines as well. Unused pills and liquids are dumped down the drain to disallow people from taking them. Unused chemicals also pass through humans into the environment. Antibiotics are given to livestock and aqua cultured fish, which in turn end up in the watersheds. Although most chemicals are still found in negligible amounts in the environment, we still have no idea how it affects organisms that live there, or how it affects human who may later drink that water. Amphibians have been found with mixed genders within the same organism. Human sperm counts have dropped by 50% in the past 40 years due to birth control pill estrogen entering the environment. This area of pollution is very much overlooked by the government. The assumption is that wastewater treatment plants will screen out this material. The truth is that plants are made to treat the sewage from water before returning it to the environment. The water is made such that it will not cause problems downstream, and not necessarily clean enough that all residues are non-existent.
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