• Cocaine in rivers harming endangered European eels
    10 replies, posted
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/21/cocaine-in-rivers-harming-endangered-eels-study-finds
Those poor animals. Tell me which rivers are polluted in such ways and I'll have them cleaned up in like, 20 minutes >"A polluted river will not have only cocaine, but also, for example, THC, morphine, MDMA, [...] heavy metal[...] MAKE THAT TEN MINUTES BRB GOING FOR A FUCKING SWIM
Do you think pharmacological pollution can be traced directly to sewage waste being irresponsibly dumped into said rivers? Since many drugs get flushed down toilets for various reasons, this would make sense to me...as unfortunate as it is. Flushing your drugs is not only bad for the environment (as they're extremely unlikely to be filtered out at water treatment facilities) and dangerous to other people, but it's also a waste of your drugs, man!
As I recall, it is linked to sewage but more simply from users using the bathroom. Hence why you can detect most drugs with a piss test.
Piss tests detect metabolic post-substances also called metabolites. These are the end product after your liver detoxifies the given drug. People using the bathroom and pissing out said metabolites wouldn't cause these effects but would be detectable.
Some still passes through the system, if I recall correctly, because your body isn't 100% efficient at removing it. We're talking tiny, tiny trace amounts of it, but in areas where the use is heavy it still adds up. London, for example, although the traces there were thought to pose no health risk to anyone.
Damn it. I love eels and to know they're suffering from pollution is just awful.
First evidence of protein profile alteration due to the main coc.. Looks like the metabolites can still have effects on freshwater organisms, so I'd assume that applies to other aquatic creatures too, such as eels. I believe there are more studies to this effect, but this will give you a quick overview of where the research was headed as early as 2013 So it is most likely the by-products from usage.
We've found the ancient fountain of youth Its time to go
i wonder what the long term psychological and physiological effects are of the vast amount of microdosing of all sorts of drugs we ingest all the time through our drinking water.
That's correct, although there are a lot of metabolites that are still plenty dangerous, like norketamine damaging bladders, etc.
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