Fish cocaine and chips, anyone?
Recently published research revealed that juvenile salmon caught in Puget Sound contained more than 80 different drugs including cocaine, valium, oxycontin, zoloft, prozac, and metformin (treatment for type-2 diabetes).
In addition, compounds found in detergents, paints, pesticides, personal care products, and plastics were reported.
Puget Sound water is not as pristine as it looks.
The study aimed to test water and fish tissues for 150 different compounds including pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and industrial compounds.
Jim Meader, an environmental toxicologist for NOAA and lead investigator for the study said in a statement, “We analyzed samples for 150 compounds and we had 61 percent of them detected in effluent [liquid waste or sewage discharged into a water source]. So we know these are going into the estuaries.” He also mentioned that the concentrations were even higher than they had expected.
Apparently, wastewater plants are unable to eliminate such compounds from the water, and there are no current regulations or monitoring procedures in place to detect them.
The worst part? This was supposed to be the clean reference or “control” area for the study.
Meaders said that he didn’t think it would affect humans too much, because people don’t generally eat juvenile chinook. (This does make us wonder, though, what they might find in the adult fish that we do eat!)
Image: USFWS
Though we assume that humans aren’t affected, contaminants are certainly causing issues for fish:
Meader said, “For all years combined, juvenile Chinook transiting contaminated estuaries exhibited an overall rate of survival that was 45% lower than that for Chinook moving through uncontaminated estuaries, which was confirmed when tested year by year.”
So, fish that travel through these contaminated areas are dying at twice the normal rate. That’s a scary statistic.
This is yet another wake-up call to all of us. How do you think we should fix this?
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