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Freshwater shrimps with cocaine....

Saw this yesterday myself. It’s in the fish too, I’m not sure if it’s a bioaccumulator or not but I would of thought so. It really does make you wonder.
 
Apparently the eels in the Thames in London are also coke heads because of the widespread recreational use of cocaine by Londoners. Does that mean they wriggle even more than usual....?!?! It does make you wonder how far from London you'd have to travel to find pure, uncontaminated water?


Dave
 
Apparently so. There has been a study into the effects of cocannie concentrations on Eels and it was found that over a certain concentration, it caused erratic movement that damaged tissues and the skeleton.
 
As the Prof they interviewed points out - this is a mainly rural catchment as well, so the mind boggles at how bad the levels might be in some urban river catchments.

For me this is another example of how little is really known about the water quality of our rivers, particularly chemical pollution. When the EA spout out our rivers being cleaner than ever, what they really mean is there is less industrial pollution and domestic sewage pollution than in the past. They can’t assess pollutants if they aren’t testing for them..

The concept of ‘clean river syndrome’ really is a load of tripe, imo.
 
Also, what about the ever increasing strength of female hormones in the water cycle? From the birth control pill.
Was research on this years ago and as far as I remember it was a major problem, with fish becoming sexless or all female in some rivers. Research seems to have gone a bit quiet on that front.
Could explain a lot and not just from a rivers perspective.
 
Paul Collins said:
Also, what about the ever increasing strength of female hormones in the water cycle? From the birth control pill.
Was research on this years ago and as far as I remember it was a major problem, with fish becoming sexless or all female in some rivers. Research seems to have gone a bit quiet on that front.
Could explain a lot and not just from a rivers perspective.
Click to expand...

Paul,

I believe that there was a study on the River Don in Sheffield, which pointed to male roach turning into females, which obviously is a major issue for recruitment. The estrogen in the contraceptive pill is the main factor. Don't know what has happened since then but I'm fairly sure that the estrogen is not being removed as part of the water treatment process.


Dave
 
David Clewer said:
Paul,

I believe that there was a study on the River Don in Sheffield, which pointed to male roach turning into females, which obviously is a major issue for recruitment. The estrogen in the contraceptive pill is the main factor. Don't know what has happened since then but I'm fairly sure that the estrogen is not being removed as part of the water treatment process.


Dave
Click to expand...

I think they can remove it during the treatment process, but the filters/process required is an expense that the water companies don't want, which isn't massively surprising given they are profit making companies. For me it's another good reason for re-nationalising the water companies.
 
David Clewer said:
Apparently the eels in the Thames in London are also coke heads because of the widespread recreational use of cocaine by Londoners. Does that mean they wriggle even more than usual....?!?! It does make you wonder how far from London you'd have to travel to find pure, uncontaminated water?
Dave
Click to expand...

I travel to Scotland a lot and see rivers that look like the colour of whisky :eek::eek:
 
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