Yes, tap water may very well contain traces of prescription pharmaceuticals drugs in municipal drinking water including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones.
How do these drugs actually get into your drinking water? You’ll be sorry you asked! When people take pills their bodies can only absorb a small portion of the medication and the rest are passed through the body and released through urine. Some people also flush expired medication down the toilet instead of disposing them properly. This waste water is then treated by the city before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Eventually the same water will be cleansed again and recycled back into our tap water supply. Unfortunately most city water treatments do not remove all traces of drug residues, which mean that people need to protect themselves by looking into home water filter systems which can remove pharmaceutical drugs. The AP has mentioned reverse osmosis as a water filtration solution that removes virtually all pharmaceutical contaminants.
Can we depend on bottled water then?
The fact is that bottled water sold anywhere is not always filtered and not necessarily cleaner or safer than most tap water. Such as according to a four-year scientific study recently made public by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The NRDC's study included testing of more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of bottled water. While most of the tested waters were found to be of high quality, some brands were significantly contaminated. About one-third of the waters tested contained levels of contamination including synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria, and arsenic (at least one sample exceeded allowable limits under either state or bottled water industry standards or guidelines). In fact, about a quarter of all bottled water is actually bottled tap water, according to government and industry estimates (some estimates go as high as 40 percent).