Environmental Influence
Think before you flush
Have you been guilty of not finishing a course of antibiotics? Have you ever had a prescription that you flushed or washed down the sink?
As it turns out, those pharmaceuticals may be coming back to you.
Ecologists around the world and here at the University of Canberra have found that an increasing number of pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics, pain killers, stimulants such as caffeine and anti-depressants, are ending up in our waterways, affecting insects, fish, birds and our entire food chain.
As the prevalence of medications grows, researchers have started investigating how much of our pharmaceutical waste is ending up in our waterways – and what effect this has on our fish and other fauna.
In the United States, studies found one or more chemicals in 80 per cent of the streams sampled. And the story isn’t so different in Australia.
In an Australian-first study, researchers have found that pharmaceuticals have found their way into the bugs, fish, platypus and even the spiders around the streams tested.
“The amount of pharmaceuticals is quite surprising,” explains Ross Thompson, Professor in Water Science at UC.
“An adult platypus is getting about 60 per cent of the adult human dose of antidepressants every day.”
Research on the effect of the pharmaceuticals on these animals is currently underway, but initial findings are alarming.
“For some fish which are getting really high doses of antidepressants, while they are happy little fish, they are insufficiently anxious. They aren’t darting away when a bird swoops down, so they are getting predated at a higher rate,” explains Ross.
So how far does the contamination go?
“All the way to the top,” says Ross. “We know it’s getting into the water, we know it’s getting out of the water to the terrestrial environment and we know it’s going up to vertebrate consumers.”
And the next part of the story might be even scarier, as Ross explains that places with near-coastal sewerage effluent, like Sydney, have effluents poured straight into the sea – where fish eat them, and then people eat those fish.
While it hasn’t been monitored yet, there is potential that pharmaceuticals would be present in the fish we are buying from the local fish and chip shops.
While the facts are overwhelming, there is potential for change. Everyone can play their part through responsible drug management and returning any unwanted pharmaceuticals to the chemist.
Ross is also hopeful for change.
“The positive of this story is that there is a set of economic levers there that can cause action,” he says.
“The quantity of antibiotics that flow through the sewerage treatment systems is so large that at times it can require treatment plans to be shut down – at considerable expense. This is great incentive for the government to promote better management of drug disposal.
“There is also room for technological development within pharmaceutical companies. If they can find a way to develop better carrier drugs, the doses for humans can be reduced and therefore less pharmaceutical waste will end up in our waterways.”
In the meantime – watch what you flush! And take advantage of the Return Unwanted Medicines (RUM) Project, a Commonwealth-funded program run through community pharmacies.
For now, our ecologists will continue to monitor the effects of the pharmaceuticals on different species and the environment, with the hope that we can save them before it’s too late.
Words by Tara Corcoran. Photo: Adobe Stock