The effects of the opioid epidemic has gone further than the eyes can see. And then there’s the sea. Fentanyl has now been detected in the blubber of bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a study recently published in the journal iScience. And unless dolphins are somehow prescribing this potent synthetic opioid medication to each other, you can thank humans for letting the opioid situation get this far.
For the study, a team from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (Anya Isabelle Ocampos, Makayla A. Guinn, Justin Elliott, Hussain Abdulla and Dara N. Orbach), Precision Toxicological Consultancy (Christiana Wittmaack) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Carrie Sinclair) took blubber samples from 89 different dolphins—83 live and six after death—from off the coast of Texas and Mississippi. They then used ultra-performance liquid chromatography along with Orbitrap Fusion Tribrid mass spectrometry to look for different pharmaceutical medications in the tissue samples.
What they found was basically Rx-rated. In 18 of the samples from live dolphins and all of the post-mortem samples, testing revealed evidence of fentanyl. In fact, in 30 of the 89 samples, at least one of the following prescription medications was present: fentanyl (which has around a hundred times the potency of morphine), carisoprodol (which is a skeletal muscle relaxant) or meprobamate, which an anti-anxiety medication.
Again, normally, one shouldn’t expect to find such medications at any level in dolphin tissue since the “bottle” in bottlenose dolphins doesn’t stand for medication bottle. But what’s in dolphins can be a representation of what’s around them in the ocean. After all, dolphins are apex predators in the ocean, meaning that they are at the tippy top of the food chain there. Therefore, what get’s into the bodies of dolphins can be a good representation—or in this case, a good bad representation—of what’s in the bodies of other marine animals.
Medications are probably reaching the oceans because humans and companies keep using different bodies of water like freaking toilet bowls for medications and various chemicals. Back in 2017, I wrote for Forbes about how antidepressants were found in the Great Lakes and fish. This included discovering antidepressants, the metabolites of antidepressants, and antihistamines in not just the brain of fish, but also their livers, muscles, and gonads. I also covered a a study published in the September 2010 issue of Aquatic Toxicology showed how antidepressants in the water may turn some species of shrimp “suicidal” and swim towards the light rather than away from it.
It’s not yet clear how such medications may be affecting dolphins since you may not get a straight answer if you ask them how they are feeling. However, prior studies have shown that fish can exhibit behavior changes or endocrine disruptions after being exposed certain anti-anxiety, pain relief or anti-inflammatory medications.
Any such fishy situation could be highly relevant to humans too since many humans like dolphins eat fish and shrimp. You’ve got to wonder how much fentanyl, carisoprodol, meprobamate and other medications are making their way into your your fish and chips, fish tacos, baked fish, fish cakes, cerviche and fish anything that you may be eating. And who knows what such continued exposure to all of this stuff might be doing to your mind and body?
This is yet another example of how humans and the organizations run by humans are polluting the Earth and its bodies of water with all sorts of things including a range of different pharmaceutical products. And even if you don’t care about all the wildlife that’s swimming around in the lakes, rivers and oceans, these most recent dolphin findings show how such pollution can readily “flipper” back to humans.
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