When people’s prescriptions change, their drugs expire or are no longer needed, these medicines are typically flushed or thrown away. A 2008 Associated Press investigation found pharmaceuticals in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans. In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas.

Illinois-Indian Sea Grant has developed a series of toolkits and initiatives to help communities, schools and individuals develop and promote programs for safe disposal of unwanted medicine.

This Thursday, November 19, over 110 local waste managers and others are registered to take part in a one-day workshop on developing collection programs for unwanted medicines in Indianapolis. This workshop will provide information and tools for community unwanted medicine collection programs, as well as for pharmacies and medical facilities to safely manage unwanted medicines. Presenters will focus on alternatives to flushing, including best practices from solid waste facilities in Indiana and surrounding states.

Topics to be discussed include: why unwanted medicine disposal is a problem, wastewater treatment issues, unwanted medication handling and disposal, and an update on legislation regarding unwanted medicine collection and disposal.

This is the third workshop on this topic that IISG has sponsored in Indianapolis in the past several years. This workshop is also sponsored by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the Indiana Board of Pharmacy, the Indiana Pharmacists Alliance, the Indiana Household Hazardous Waste Task Force, and Eli Lilly.

From Science Daily:

Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb. Read more.

From the New York Times:

At Yellowstone National Park, the clear soda cups and white utensils are not your typical cafe-counter garbage. Made of plant-based plastics, they dissolve magically when heated for more than a few minutes.

At Ecco, a popular restaurant in Atlanta, waiters no longer scrape food scraps into the trash bin. Uneaten morsels are dumped into five-gallon pails and taken to a compost heap out back.

And at eight of its North American plants, Honda is recycling so diligently that the factories have gotten rid of their trash Dumpsters altogether.

Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations. Read more.

As if Lake Michigan fish don’t have enough competition for resources. An Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant study has found that the diet of an invasive freshwater hydroid includes organisms that are an important food source for young-of-the-year and bottom-dwelling fish.

“Cordylophora caspia typically eats larval zebra and quagga mussels,” said Nadine Folino-Rorem, Wheaton College biologist. “However, when those sources are not readily available, the hydroid can feed on other invertebrates, which potentially affects prey availability for fish.” Folino-Rorem, along with Martin Berg, a Loyola University Chicago biologist, studied the distribution and diet of C. caspia in Lake Michigan.

The hydroid lives in freshwater and brackish or slightly salty habitats. The freshwater colonial hydroid is native to the Caspian and Black Seas. C. caspia colonies consist of several polyps or individuals approximately one millimeter long that are interconnected by their gastrovascular cavities. Colonies grow on hard surfaces; in southern Lake Michigan, C. caspia can be found in harbors on rocks, piers, pilings, and on clusters of zebra and quagga mussels.

The researchers found C. caspia in all eight Chicago harbors sampled as well as at two offshore sites. In fact, the population of the freshwater hydroid is growing in Lake Michigan. Folino-Rorem speculates that this may be due in part to street salts washing into the lake and changing water quality. “C. caspia thrives in higher salinity,” she explained.

The researchers also found that the freshwater hydroid can eat organisms—chironomids– that are two to three times its size. “This was often accomplished by working together,” said Folino-Rorem. “When one polyp gets a hold of a chironomid, the organism can continue to thrash about until another polyp latches onto it too. The two polyps engulf the chironomid, sometimes meeting in the middle.”

C. caspia is limited in its range due to its need to colonize on hard surfaces—Lake Michigan’s muddy bottom does not provide a hospitable habitat. However, the recent spread of quagga mussels may increase the amount of available substrate for attachment. Unlike zebra mussels, quagga mussels can colonize the soft, muddy bottoms found in deeper areas. According to Tom Nalepa, a NOAA biologist at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, 99 percent of what his team finds when sampling offshore in southern Lake Michigan waters is quagga mussels.

“They are more efficient than zebra mussels in using food resources,” he said. “And they tolerate cooler temperatures. We found that the number of quagga mussels in deep and in shallow waters far exceeds zebra mussel numbers even at their peak.”

For C. caspia, the spread of quagga mussels may prove beneficial in terms of expanding their range to offshore waters. For fish populations, this may prove to be more bad news.

Illinois Valley Community Hospital worked with the Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal Program (P2D2) to initiate a new medicine collection program at the Illinois State Police Headquarters in LaSalle County. Residents can drop off their unwanted medicines at the station using a new medicine drop box. The drop box was installed at a ceremony at the police headquarters on September 23, 2009. IISG purchased the drop box for the station.

Pictured by the box are: (back row left to right)–State Senator Gary Dahl; City of La Salle Mayor Jeff Grove; La Salle Police Chief Rob Uranich, Tommy Hobbs, CEO Illinois Valley Community Hospital; Captain Roach, Chief of State Police District 17; Ashleigh Scholle, student at Area Career Center located at La Salle Peru Township High School; Jennifer Sines,pharmacist Illinois Valley Community Hospital; Deb Parisot, graphic arts teacher at the Area Career Center; Trooper Craig Graham, State Police District 17.

Environment Canada and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are pleased to release the Nearshore Areas of the Great Lakes 2009 Report. This report describes the current state of nearshore area environmental conditions and changes in nearshore areas of the Great Lakes since 1996, and it suggests management implications related to nearshore issues.

Nearshore areas of the Great Lakes are important because this is where land-based activities can impact water quality and where humans generally interact with the Great Lakes.

The report includes information on the issues of botulism, harmful algae blooms, viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS), and shoreline development, among other stressors. Experts in the United States and Canada contributed the chapters for this report, which was prepared for the State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference (SOLEC) 2008.

At the link above, you can read or download the full report or the State of the Great Lakes Highlights.

From the New York Times:

Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va.

In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system. Read more.

This link also provides a way to search data on more than 200,000 facilities around the nation permitted to discharge pollutants. Just choose a state and put in your zip code.

From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

The leaping Asian carp have long been a problem for recreational boaters plying waters infested by the species, which was accidentally unleashed two decades ago during government sewage treatment experiments in Arkansas.

Now the misery has spread to commercial barge operators near Chicago.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Tuesday it will end a subsidy that provides an extra tow boat for barges moving through a new carp barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. Read more.

From Science Daily:

Aquaculture, once a fledgling industry, now accounts for 50 percent of the fish consumed globally, according to a new report by an international team of researchers. And while the industry is more efficient than ever, it is also putting a significant strain on marine resources by consuming large amounts of feed made from wild fish harvested from the sea, the authors conclude. Their findings are published in the Sept. 7 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Read more.