Pharmaceuticals have a very specific place in human and veterinary medicine. That's why researchers are raising red flags after finding traces of powerful and dangerous drugs like Fentanyl in the blubber of live dolphins from the Gulf of Mexico.
What's happening?
A research team led by Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC) students and faculty unveiled the alarming results in a study published in the journal iScience.
The team analyzed 89 dolphin blubber samples with 83 coming from live dolphins and six from deceased ones, per a news release on the study. They uncovered rogue pharmaceuticals in 30 of the dolphins and Fentanyl in 18 of them, including all six of the dead dolphins studied. The results are concerning not just for dolphins but for humans, too. The marine animals eat fish and shrimp, as humans do, which could point to possible unwanted consumption.
Accidental ingestion for humans can come with "harmful effects including antibiotic resistance, addiction, overdose, and mortality," said Dr. Dana Orbach, a principal investigator. Orbach added that "pharmaceuticals have become emerging micropollutants and are a growing global concern."
Why is the discovery of this pharmaceutical pollution important?
"Dolphins are often used as bioindicators of ecosystem health in contaminant research due to their lipid-rich blubber that can store contaminants and be sampled relatively minimally invasively," wrote Orbach. Simply put, the researchers' findings indicate this might be a "long-standing issue in the marine environment," as Orbach asserted.
The study uncovered that dolphins from high-risk areas, like ones with oil spills and algal blooms, demonstrated higher levels of pharmaceuticals. Fentanyl was of particular concern due to its extreme potency.
"We did find one dead dolphin in Baffin Bay in South Texas within one year of the largest liquid fentanyl drug bust in US history in the adjacent county," Orbach noted.
The researchers said that while the impacts of pharmaceutical exposure on marine mammals aren't yet known, their existence should set the stage for more research. A study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology shared some disturbing impacts of the pollution on wild fish's behavior.
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Definitely 😭 What's being done about pharmaceutical pollution?
Increasing monitoring and digging deeper into where contamination is occurring will play a huge role in unearthing how bad the problem is and controlling it effectively.
"Our research team emphasizes the need for proactive monitoring of emerging contaminants, especially in regions with large human populations and major fishing or aquaculture industries," said Orbach.
Other key moves will be finding ways to purify waters polluted by pharmaceuticals, as a separate research team at Carnegie Mellon took on. Other steps include educating drug providers on how to properly dispose of the drugs and pushing pharmaceutical companies to create "greener" drugs that break down after use.
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