Human Excrement Turns Trout Into Meth-Addled Addicts
Our drugs are making brown trout addicted to meth and female starlings less attractive to potential mates. These are among the disturbing effects documented in a new paper in Nature Sustainability.
Pharmaceuticals enter ecosystems when wastewater-treatment plants are not equipped to filter out all contaminants. As a result, antidepressants, painkillers, antibiotics and other drugs end up in rivers, lakes, and the soil.
“There are a few pathways for these chemicals to enter the environment,” Michale Bertram, one of the paper’s authors, said. “If there is inadequate treatment of pharmaceuticals that are being released during drug production, that’s one way. Another is during use. When a human takes a pill, not all of that drug is broken down inside our bodies and so through our excrement, the effluent is released directly into the environment.”
Besides meth-addled trout and undesirable starlings, there are European perch losing their fear of predators after absorbing depression medication, male fish becoming feminized from estrogen dosing, and fathead minnows growing anxious on caffeine.
The researchers analyzed river water from 1,052 sites in 104 countries, identifying 61 drugs. They found that 43% of the sites had at least one drug present in levels higher than ecological safety limits.
Some of this carnage is preventable, the authors say. Drugs can be developed that biodegrade more quickly and fully, for example. Wastewater treatment infrastructure can be improved to remove many pharmaceutical pollutants before they reach the environment. And healthcare professionals and veterinarians should be trained on the environmental impacts of pharmaceutical prescriptions.
“Greener drugs reduce the potential for pollution throughout the entire cycle,” says co-author Gorka Orive. “Drugs must be designed to not only be effective and safe, but also to have a reduced potential risk to wildlife and human health when present in the environment.”
Photo credit: robposse / Creative Commons
