Medicine

United States opioid crisis: Mussels off Seattle found with oxycodone in their system

May 26, 2018 04:56·
Seattle Mussels Test Positive for Opioids

Seattle Mussels Test Positive for Opioids

These mussels, however, were never meant to end up on the dinner table.

Oxycodone was detected in mussels from the Seattle and Bremerton harbor areas of the Puget Sound in a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife pollution survey.

"It's telling me there's a lot of people taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound area", Jennifer Lanksbury, a biologists at the Department of Fish and Wildlife, told KIRO7.

Melphalan was present at "levels where we might want to look at biological impacts", scientist Andy James of the Puget Sound Institute said in a statement.

It's possible, however, that the opioids could affect fish, which are known to respond to the drugs, James added.

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Scientists have discovered oxycodone in mussels when testing water for contamination.

People have nothing to worry about when it comes to eating mussels from a restaurant or shop because they come from clean locations., but it's another sign of what's ending up in the water and harming marine life. Penn Cove mussels are placed at sites all around the Sound for three months, during which they soak up whatever's in the water.

In three of the 18 locations, the mussels then tested positive for trace amounts of oxycodone.

Scientists usually find chemical compounds in Puget Sound waters, ranging from pharmaceuticals to drugs such as cocaine, but this is the first time that opioids have been discovered in local shellfish, according to the Puget Sound Institute. "It's likely coming from wastewater treatment plants", Lanksbury said.

Small amounts of drugs are deposited in human waste after they're ingested, which wastewater management systems struggle to completely remove, resulting in trace amounts of narcotics being dumped into oceans, according to the outlet. That said, it is concerning for fish, especially threatened species like salmon. The shellfish are filter feeders who gain nourishment from their surroundings, while simultaneously absorbing whatever contaminants are also in the water - making them an ideal barometer for environmental scientists to test water pollution in a given area. And none of the mussels tested are near any commercial shellfish beds. "The concentration of oxycodone in the mussels were about 100 to 500 times less than than you would get in a normal therapeutic dose for humans", Lanksbury said.

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