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As crazy as it sounds, it does add another layer to how human consumption has been impacting our planet.
For as long as humans have been on this planet, our environmental impact has become innumerable. What’s worse is that many outcomes of our actions remain unbeknownst to us, pushing us closer to the edge of an irreparable planet.
One such example is drugs, which somehow find themselves in our various waterways. At first thought, you might think that this is only possible through illegal dumping by traffickers and illicit drug producers. However, they only account for a fraction of the drugs found in our waters.
Instead, against our wildest imaginations, the primary source is actually ordinary, everyday human activity. Aside from such illicit drugs, it is also common pharmaceuticals, and even caffeine, that end up in natural waterways. Many of us fail to realise that what our body doesn’t absorb from these drugs we excrete, with their remnants ending up in lakes, streams and oceans.
Sadly, as prevalent as this issue is, less is known about how the presence of such drugs in our waters affects wildlife. This is especially true when it comes to illicit drugs such as cocaine or heroin, because let’s face it; it’s not easy to stimulate such a situation in our natural world in the name of science, right?
Well, as it turns out, it is possible, and a group of researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Griffith University, and the Max Planck Institute came together and did so. Specifically, they took 2-year-old salmon smolts and split them into three groups. A control group that was not exposed to anything, a group exposed to pure cocaine, and a group exposed to benzoylecgonine (a metabolite of cocaine that ends up in human waste).
Subsequently, with trackers attached to them, the salmon were released into Sweden’s Lake Vättern and studied for eight weeks.
While the method they used is surely unusual, and ethically dubious, the landmark findings that were published early in April reveal an eye-opening reality. For one, the group exposed to benzoylecgonine swam 1.9 times farther per week than the other groups, and scattered over 12km further across the lake. While the group exposed to pure cocaine acted somewhat the same, the effects were much weaker and less consistent.
Scientists from King’s College London and the University of Suffolk found traces of cocaine in every freshwater shrimp sampled from 15 locations across five river catchments in Suffolk.#EnvironmentalScience #WaterPollution #FreshwaterShrimp #fblifestyle pic.twitter.com/AacnKbydns
— The Investigative (@AnonymousNewsHQ) July 26, 2026
Here’s the thing: in this study, researchers intentionally exposed salmon to an illicit drug. However, past studies in Rio and the Bahamas had found cocaine present in wild sharks, simply from these animals existing within these regions’ waters.
