Water is an essential part of life that everyone must use in order to survive. As one consumes their water, do they ever stop to think about how many chemicals are being entered into their body while drinking? There have been more than forty one million American cases that have been found to contain a variety of different pharmaceutical medications in their drinking supplies. These drugs include anticonvulsants, antibiotics, sex hormones, opioids, mood stabilizers, contraceptives, and many more. Not only are there pharmaceutical wastes obscured inside our water systems, there are also a great amount of pharmaceutical drugs blanketing the environment everywhere. Working at a pharmacy as a pharmacy technician, I feel that it is tremendously important that all unused medications be disposed of safely and properly. An article from USA Today, in September of 2008, exclaimed that 250 million pounds of drugs were being flushed by health facilities a year. However, there are still very many medications that are being dispersed all over the earth's soil and creating a hazardous environment to all species. Lakes, streams, reservoirs, and rivers usually contain more than one hundred different pharmaceutical medications. The New York state health department and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) found concentration traces of antibiotics, anticonvulsants, antidepressants, heart medications, estrogens, and a tranquilizer in a test of New York city's upstate water. One may believe that they are safe by using bottled waters or home filtration systems, however, exposure to drug chemicals are still present among these. In fact, a lot of bottling companies typically do not even test for pharmaceutical containment. Not only are there problems in the United States' surface water, deep-underground aquifers are also contaminated with pharmaceutical waste. This is a problem because these aquifers are what contain about forty percent of the nation's water supply. These combinations of random pharmaceutical drugs have been found to have startling effects on, not only, human cells but wildlife as well. Benjamin H. Grumbles, United States Environmental Protection Agency's assistant administrator for water, explained "We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously.  in a 2008 USA Today article. Global wildlife crisis has begun to grow across the nation at an undesirable rate. A hidden cause of this is due to improper dumping of pharmaceutical wastes, which eventually become flushed into the environment