Lisa Colosi and her team of researchers spend a whole lot of time examining dirty water.
"This is probably one of the hottest topics in environmental engineering right now," said Assistant Professor at UVA's Environmental Engineering School Lisa Colosi.
Now, they have this website to show for it. Their Pharma-Calc Database allows anyone in Virginia to punch in their zip code and see the varying levels of prescription drugs that are coming through the faucet.
Colosi hopes their findings will help improve technologies at water treatment plants.
"Things that we didn't think to look for even 20 years ago and we didn't have the information or instrumentation to look for then," she explained.
Much of it comes from prescriptions being flushed down the drain.
"I typically discourage it, just because I don't know enough about it to encourage them to do so," added Meadowcreek Pharmacy Manager Ted O'Neill.
O'Neill is often asked about how to properly dispose of medications.
"It is something that frequently comes up when medications are discontinued, or someone passes on," he continued.
Colosi says prescriptions in the water is not as scary as it sounds. That's because the concentrations are so low, only recently with better technology have they even been able to measure it.
"People have an understandable fear of contamination in the water supply," Colosi remarked. "They want to know what they and their families are drinking."
Some of the most common drugs you'll find are metformin, which is commonly found in diabetes medicine, and various statins, which are used in heart disease drugs.
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