The Missouri River is still pretty clean, and since there are no large populations or animal operations upstream from Bismarck, there is no reason to think there would be a high level of pharmaceutical drugs in the city's drinking water, said Bismarck's director of utility operations Keith Demke on Wednesday.

He doesn't have data showing that, because the city doesn't test for those substances.

"But logic would say we don't have big source upstream, so it's probably not going to be there,"he said.

Demke, responding to a recent Associated Press news story that there is a presence of a variety of pharmaceuticals in the water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas - albeit in small concentrations in parts per billion and trillion - said there aren't plans to test for pharmaceuticals in Bismarck's water.

A Monday Associated Press story, based on an APinvestigative effort in which reporters surveyed the nation's 50 largest cities as well as other water providers in all 50 states, reported that drugs such as antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones had been found in water supplies from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.

Demke said the news story's results weren't a suprise.

"It's very logical and completely understandable,"he said.

He said it's better living through chemistry, "We've taken that to the max … those chemicals have to go somewhere."

But he said what's showing up is generally at "trace levels,"and if Bismarck were to test, he questions what meaning he could glean from the results.

"There's no research out there that says what's a safe level," he said.

Charlie Jaszkowiak, superintendent of Bismarck's water treatment plant, said Wednesday that water industry officials have been talking about this issue for about five years.

"We're certainly thinking about this,"Demke said.

But Demke said the good news is that there's no indication there's an immediate danger while he and others mull over how to put in place a testing program that makes sense and that's cost effective.

He said Bismarck is sitting in a good place, not having large populations or animal operations upstream that would be discharging such drugs into the river.

Demke said there's no question that downstream of Bismarck, since Bismarck is discharging into the river, the concentrations of pharmaceuticals would be higher - as well as chemicals from a variety of other things, personal care products, cosmetics, shampoos and cleaners, antibiotic handsoaps, and so on. But he said Bismarck's daily discharge into the river, 6 million gallons, is a drop in the bucket in a river that sends about 6 billion gallons of water past Bismarck every day.

And with dilution, by the time the water gets to the next intake spot, Fort Yates, about 50 miles away, he said those substances are probably unidentifiable.

He said he expects there will be future federal requirements on testing for additional chemcials such as pharmaceuticals, and thinks the city will have something in place even before that happens.

But in the meantime, the city's drinking water, in periodic testing, shows no elevated levels for any of the substances that the city tests for under the requirements of the nation's safe drinking act.

He said on a daily basis, Bismarck's water is tested for chlorine residual, harness and turbidity. On a weekly basis, testing for bacterial contamination is done. On a quarterly basis, the water is tested for residuals from the disinfection process, such as chlorine.

Every five years, a full test of the river is done for a broad range of inorganic chemicals and minerals - arsenic, nitrates, selenium and so on. And testing is done for hydrocarbons and pesticide-related chemicals. And he said none of those substances have ever tested at elevated levels.

The city spends about $5,000 to $10,000 a year from testing costs for the test that need to go to outside labs, he said.

Meanwhile, human health aside, the injection of these substances in the environment is another concern.

Dan Mattern, a former microbiologist who now works for Bismarck's Environmental Health Division, said introduction of such substances might be causing infertility in fish, among other problems.

"There are all kinds of ramifications," he said.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at virginia.grantier@;bismarcktribune.com.)

He said there are thousands of substances out there that could be tested for, and it's not possible to take a water sample to a lab and have the lab test for everything.

Different substances take different kinds of tests and equipment.

"We're talking in the thousands of dollars per analysis,"he said. "It doesn't do you any good to do one test."