Freshwater eels may already have the face of someone who has done too much cocaine—but that may be less of a joke than it seems. A
new study exposes the potential environmental costs of drugs like cocaine, even in trace amounts, making their way into our planet’s fresh waterways. Focusing on the
endangered European freshwater eels, researchers first focused on the levels of pollution
these animals faced.
“Data show a great presence of illicit drugs and their metabolites in surface waters worldwide,” says
Anna Capaldo, a research biologist at the University of Naples Federico II and the lead author of the study. She adds that water near densely populated cities is even worse, with some
research showing particularly high concentrations in the Thames River near London’s Houses of Parliament and in the Italian Amo River near Pisa of leaning tower fame.
Researchers took eels, gave them trace amounts of the drug, and watched them. While the coked-up eels were predictably more “hyperactive” than their sober counterparts, they seemed relatively healthy. Unfortunately, those looks were deceiving, according to researchers.
They found the drug accumulates in the brain, muscles, gills, skin, and other tissues of the eels. The muscle of the fish also showed swelling and even breakdowns, and the hormones that regulate their physiology changed. These problems were even around after an enforced 10-day rehab period in which the researchers removed the eels from water with cocaine.
According to Harvard Health, our waterways become polluted by the drugs we ingest and make in a variety of ways, including from our toilets after we’ve urinated or flushed those drugs down, through our skin when we swim, and occasionally due to some more obvious accident. And while the eels seem to be relatively healthy, the fact that their hormonal physiology is being altered could have dire consequences for them. An example would be the possibility that their sexual maturation cycle could be hindered, affecting the timing on when and how they are able to reproduce.
Solutions include doing less cocaine as a species. But more importantly, we should be more mindful of the waste we create and its profound effects downstream—literally.