How Drug Residues Affect Water Wildlife

We are all aware of how polluted our water sources are becoming, but just how does it affect water wildlife? 

A recent story about fish that were hooked on meth posed the question of how our drugs are affecting the waters.

There are all kinds of ways that our drugs make their way into water resources, polluting them beyond recognition and affecting the wildlife that lives there.

Diana Aga, director of RENEW, said that antidepressants are the worst drugs for aquatic life. 

A 2017 tudy examined fish from the Niagara River and found the highest bioaccumulation of antidepressants occurred in the fishes’ brains, followed by their livers, muscles, and gonads. Research has also shown that drugs affect the way that fish behave, throwing off their natural and instinctual behaviors. 

Researchers said, “The accumulation of pharmaceuticals in aquatic invertebrates poses a range of potential impacts to the invertebrates themselves and their predators, including altered growth, reproduction, and behavior.”

Two decades’ worth of research has shown that there are more than 600 pharmaceutical residues in rivers and streams, deeply polluting the waters and changing the aquatic life that lives there forever. 

All kinds of aquatic life are affected by drugs in the water from fish to shellfish to plants. However, it is impossible to truly understand how this toxic combination of drugs affects aquatic wildlife – only that it shows signs of disrupting the natural balance that aquatic life must live by. This is just further proof of the Pollution caused by humans and our poor waste habits. 

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