March 8th, 2013 by Irene Miles
Last month, representatives from eight Sea Grant programs attended a two-day workshop in Jacksonville, FL hosted by Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. Designed as an opportunity for specialists, educators, and communicators to build a national partnership on reducing pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the nation’s waterways, the event was a first step in working towards coordinating these efforts.
Funded by the NOAA National Sea Grant Office, the workshop brought together a wide range of input from people who have extensive experience working on the issue of PPCPs in waterways, allowing for a tremendous collaboration.
Out of the two-day workshop came a unified message: The ways people choose to use and dispose of PPCPs impacts water quality everywhere.
In months to come, workshop participants will continue to work together to develop programs that carry that message to local communities.
“This is a national problem that requires local action. Sea Grant’s new working group is well-suited to tackle this issue because each program is trusted in their communities,” said Laura Kammin, IISG pollution prevention program specialist. “We are sharing our resources to create a strong and effective national partnership.”
The meeting also provided an opportunity for representatives from New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant programs to mentor others by sharing their award-winning work on reducing PPCPs in the Great Lakes basin. These and other discussions opened the door for collaboration with the North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Oregon, and Southern California Sea Grant programs.
IISG has been providing communities with information about how to start safe, legal medicine collection programs since 2006. So far, IISG has helped 63 communities in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan with single-day or permanent collection programs, ensuring the proper disposal of 9.65 million pills (81,813 pounds of unused medication).
For more information on IISG’s efforts to spread the word about proper use and disposal of PPCPs visit www.unwantedmeds.org.
January 29th, 2013 by Irene Miles
The Drug Enforcement Administration has published proposed regulations regarding the proper disposal of prescription pharmaceuticals and other controlled substances.
From the DEA’s release:
“This rule proposes requirements to govern the secure disposal of controlled substance medications by both DEA registrants and what the Controlled Substances Act refers to as “ultimate users” of these medications (patients and animals). The proposed regulations seek to expand the options available to collect these medications from ultimate users for the purpose of disposal, to include take-back events, mail-back programs, and collection box locations.”
The public comment period is open until February 19, and people can review the entire proposal online here.
For more information about why proper disposal of these substances is so important, visit our Unwanted Meds website.
January 18th, 2013 by Irene Miles
The National Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal program (P2D2) has had a great deal of success lately. After placing third in the international Volvo Adventure Award competition, the program partnered with the second place winners of the Volvo competition to start a P2D2 program in Erechim, Brazil. The P2D2 program began in 2008 as a collaborative effort between local pharmacies, law enforcement agencies, officials, and Pontiac Township High School students in Paul Ritter’s Ecology class and Eric Bohm’s Illinois Studies class.
The P2D2 program’s mission is to educate the public about the harm done to the environment due to current drug disposal practices and to provide communities with an alternative disposal approach that ensures the quality of water for future generations. Their good idea has quickly caught on; the P2D2 program is now available in more than 54 counties in Illinois, 21 other states, and now goes international with the addition of the Brazil P2D2 program coordinated by Paul Hubner.
January 3rd, 2013 by Irene Miles
The University of Illinois’ Learning in Community (LINC) program provides service-learning opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience in a variety of fields while earning course credit towards their degree. The program also gives various departments and units at the University a chance to expand their mission and get students involved in critical issues. This past fall term, the LINC Program offered a Sea Grant-focused course for eight University of Illinois students where they learned about environmental threats to local and regional waterways. They designed and executed projects based on what they had learned about proper disposal of unwanted medicines.
At the conclusion of the course, students developed five activities focused on water issues, informing a larger audience about their importance and local impacts.
The projects included:
– A presentation and activity for Urbana High School’s science club students
– An article in the Green Observer and accompanying Facebook page about the importance of proper disposal of pharmaceuticals
– Placement of brochures at the McKinley Health Center in coordination with the Directors of Health Education and the Pharmacy
– A plan to spread the message about proper medicine disposal at student dormitories and to involve students in medicine collection events in 2013
The course and projects that resulted informed current University of Illinois students about important environmental issues, while giving them experience collaborating with each other, working with local organizations and businesses, and performing outreach to share the information they learned with residents of Champaign-Urbana.
October 2nd, 2012 by Irene Miles
Thousands of residents in Illinois and Indiana came out last Saturday with the goal of ridding their homes of unwanted pharmaceuticals as part of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) 5th annual National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. police officers and volunteers in more than 200 locations in Illinois and 70 in Indiana collected bottles, boxes, and sometimes even garbage bags full of prescription and over-the-counter human and veterinary medications. Everything collected will be properly incinerated by the DEA.
IISG staffers were at two of these locations at Walgreens stores in Champaign and Urbana, joining local police officers and Walgreens representatives to collect medication, answer questions about the environmental effects of throwing away or flushing pharmaceuticals, and provide information on how to safely dispose of medications when collection events are not available.
At both locations, people began lining up to hand over their medicine even before the event began. IISG volunteers heard from several people that they had been saving medications in anticipation of Saturday’s event. Take-back event regulars brought medications accumulated just since April’s DEA-sponsored event, but some brought pharmaceuticals with much older time stamps. One woman disposed of medicine she had been storing in her cabinet since 2005, and another brought in medication that was almost 20 years old. Exact figures on how many pounds of pharmaceuticals were collected during the 4-hour event won’t be announced by the DEA for several weeks, but police officers involved in the event described the day as on track to exceed previous take-back events.
Single-day collection events like this are an important way to limit negative impacts to wildlife and local waterways from prescriptions and medications that are improperly disposed of. A wide-range of pharmaceutical chemicals has been found in rivers, groundwater, and drinking water throughout the country due to medications being flushed down the toilet or thrown in the trash. The impact of these chemicals on long-term human health is still unknown, but a connection between pharmaceutical-contaminated waters and impaired development, behavior, and reproduction has been found in many species of fish and other aquatic wildlife.
Ridding homes of unused medication can also help protect the elderly, children, and pets from accidental poisonings and reduce instances of prescription or over-the-counter drug abuse.
IISG has been educating people on pharmaceutical stewardship issues and helping communities establish safe and legal permanent medicine collection programs for more than six years. For additional information on how to dispose of medicine between take-back events or in areas where collections are not available, visit www.unwantedmeds.org.
August 7th, 2012 by Irene Miles
Seventh-grade teacher Kimiko Pettis participated in this year’s Windy City Earth Force project in partnership with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and the Calumet Environmental Education Program at The Field Museum, where she learned about the GLRI-funded Stewardship Project Contest (PDF). Ms. Pettis was selected as one of three award-winning teachers, and her students at Thomas Hoyne Elementary in Chicago helped educate their local community about the importance of properly using and disposing of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP).
The class’ first step was to research the subject of PPCPs, how to dispose of them, and what effects they can have if they’re allowed into the water. The class invited IISG staffers and representatives from the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum to provide hands-on activities teaching them about water quality.
Then they put what they had learned into action by making posters and flyers that they posted in local churches, businesses, and shops. They also conducted a school-wide survey about water quality to find out what their fellow students knew about the issues, and wrote letters to legislators and environmental agencies detailing what they had learned about threats to water safety.
At the end, the students produced a great video skit to share with their fellow students at the school, and they participated in the Ford Environmental Leadership Summit at the Field Museum on May 8, 2012, where they were able to display the posters and flyers they had made and engage with the attendees to talk about proper disposal of PPCPs.
Ms. Pettis and two teachers in Pennsylvania will each receive a $100 gift certificate to use for education resources as an award for their excellence in fostering student engagement and stewardship.
The contest, sponsored by Sea Grant Programs in Pennsylvania, Illinois-Indiana, and New York will continue throughout the 2012-13 school year, and complete details are included in the PDF linked above.
June 15th, 2012 by Irene Miles
IISG education team members Robin Goettel and Terri Hallesy partnered with Angie Viands of the Field Museum’s Earth Force Program, along with students and teachers within the Calumet community to raise awareness about properly disposing of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs).
Windy City Earth Force is part of the museum’s Calumet Environmental Education Program (CEEP). Earth Force is a program that engages 7th and 8th grade students in action projects to address environmental issues in their community.
Students from four schools developed community-based information projects that were showcased at the Earth Force youth summit at Chicago’s Field Museum on May 8, 2012.
Below is a rundown of the final projects that were part of the event:
Thomas Hoyne Elementary
Ms. Pettis’ 7th grade students’ goal was to find out about potential health concerns for humans and animals caused by PPCPs and to find out what health concerns may lurk within our water supply.
They produced several informational items to help raise awareness about how people contribute to pollution. Those items included:
– Letters to stakeholders, including businesses, legislators, and environmental organizations (including National Resources Defense Council and Illinois Department of Agriculture) about contaminates in the waterways and the importance of water quality standard improvements.
– Fliers to distribute to the public, as well as family and friends about the issue of contaminants and how they can make a difference in their community.
– Posters in local businesses and churches with the message “Stop Pollution in our Water: be green, stop pollution, and save our Earth.”
– School-wide surveys to determine the pollution tolerance index rating for various aquatic species.
– E-mail messages to editors at Southtown Star newspaper and Treehugger.com requesting them to publish their classroom project.
The final display at the summit included information about how personal care products (PCPs) can be harmful in waterways, as well as additional steps that people can take to help solve this problem. Students displayed sample PCPs that are often found in aquatic ecosystems in the hopes of raising awareness about contaminants in water.
Bennett Elementary
Ms. Millner’s students created a poster display, “Don’t Trash it! Bag It!” They had researched disposal methods for medications, hair care products, and cellphones.
The students educated their fellow classmates about proper disposal methods and passed out literature to hundreds of students to take home to their families. The handouts included information about using either coffee grounds or kitty litter to dispose of the unwanted medicine in the trash, or bringing these pharmaceuticals to a medicine collection site or a community collection event. They also conveyed the message that it’s better to use up hair care products instead of throwing them away. The students cited earth911.com as a useful website for information about how to properly dispose of personal care products.
Students commented that “this project helped their community because people really need to know how hair care products get into our waterways and can endanger aquatic species,” and “I’m doing a big part in the community. People should wake up to it so that our environment can be more pure.”
Robert A. Black Magnet School
Ms. McNeal’s after-school Science Club students got the word out about proper disposal of PPCPs by writing and performing a rap song that they shared with their community.
In addition, they developed a flier about how to help dispose of medications including the location of the nearest police station collection box.
All of the students did a terrific job of finding out about these issues and coming up with ways to share that information with their community. Congratulations to the students, teachers, and the Earth Force program on making the event such a success.
This “Undo the Chemical Brew” education project is funded through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Check out the latest information by visiting www.unwantedmeds.org.
April 23rd, 2012 by Irene Miles
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant’s new video celebrates the program’s recent opportunity to raise awareness about safe disposal of unused medicine in one of the biggest venues possible – Times Square!
An estimated 500,000 people go through Times Square every day, and one million people crowded the streets at midnight last New Year’s Eve.
The focus of the Times Square message was to not flush medicines. For years, the recommendation was to do just that – but now we know that these chemicals can end up in lakes, rivers, and often our drinking water. The best solution right now is to take your unwanted or expired medicines to a collection event in your area where they will be safely and properly disposed of.
To learn more about this issue and find helpful resources, visit our new website, www.unwantedmeds.org.
Last month, representatives from eight Sea Grant programs attended a two-day workshop in Jacksonville, FL hosted by Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. Designed as an opportunity for specialists, educators, and communicators to build a national partnership on reducing pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the nation’s waterways, the event was a first step in working towards coordinating these efforts. 
