Discarded drugs take a bad trip in the environment.

Publication: Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL)

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Chicago Tribune

Byline: Julie Deardorff

Though generally not as lethal, leftover prescription drugs seem to be as hard to get rid of as nuclear waste.

Julius Miller of Deerfield, Ill., recently discovered this maddening conundrum after he was diagnosed with a rare blood disease. The 69-year-old retiree switched medication so frequently that he ended up with hundreds of unneeded but perfectly good pills.

Many people mindlessly flush unwanted medication down the toilet. It's estimated that at least $1 billion in drugs "vanish" this way every year.

But flushed drugs don't magically disappear; they contaminate the environment. Pharmaceuticals pass untreated through sewage plants and flow into rivers, lakes and oceans or are spread on farm fields as...

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