Antidepressants In the Water Are Making Shrimp Suicidal 182
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the crustacean-frustration dept.
from the crustacean-frustration dept.
Antidepressants may help a lot of people get up in the morning but new research shows they are making shrimp swim into that big bowl of cocktail sauce in the sky. Alex Ford, a marine biologist at the University of Portsmouth, found that shrimp exposed to the antidepressant fluoxetine are 5 times more likely to swim towards light instead of away from it. Shrimp usually swim away from light as it is associated with birds or fishermen.
Re:At least the sea is turning acidic (Score:1, Informative)
So is this happening now? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh I get it, waste drugs should not be put into the ecosystem. They can affect animals just as much as humans. But the story this links to is just FUD and the study is behind a paywall.
Re:This should be Science, not Idle. (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of shrimp are already being affected by this.
The article doesn't contain enough information to justify this conclusion. The article implies that shrimp are being affected by this, but cites NOTHING that actually shows that shrimp have been affected. The researcher observed the behaviour change in shrimp in the lab when exposed to the antidepressant levels presumed to be present in the waterways containing the effluent in question. The article didn't cite any study of the behaviour of shrimp in the wild that demonstrated the problem.
The real environmental concerns are:
How long do these (and other) pharmaceutical chemicals last in the ocean?
What are the effects of the numerous and various chemicals humans dump into the ocean? (My wild guess is that this antidepressant issue is the least of our worries.)