Anitdepressants And Your Fish

[zander]

There was some mention of this type of thing in a previous "eating fish out of Lake Springfield" type of thread but I found this article very interesting.

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles...90107/Note2.asp

It is not just for kids!!!

[Wayne SW/MO]

The large number of meds ending up in our waters is a relatively new thing and I'm afraid to think about the long range consequences.

[Buckshotdad1960]

That makes you not won’t to eat the fish. And I wonder if this is just the tip of the ice burg?

[eric1978]

That study seems a little "fishy" to me. I'm no scientist, but when a drug is ingested, the body metabolizes and breaks down the molecular arrangement of that drug back into the elements with which it was constructed. If someone popped a Prozac and peed it out an hour later, it wouldn't have any effect on the person, but that's not the case. Drugs are "used up" by the body, and all that's disposed of is the waste. When you drink a beer, you don't pass the alcohol or the calories; it's used up by the metabolism as it's converted to energy.

Dumping a pile of pills down a toilet is a different story, but it would still be such a minute trace in parts per million that I just can't see it having an impact. If you pour a hundred grams of any substance into a small aquarium, yeah it's gonna do something to a fish.

I'm not saying human byproducts aren't a problem in our waterways, but I'm much more concerned with parasites and industrial waste.

I'll just eat more chicken. They're not as fun to catch. (And on that note, any farm-raised fish, meat, poultry and dairy we are eating that isn't raised organically is going to be far more pumped-up with chemicals than the fish you catch out of most any water.)

[zander]

They aren't used up. That assumes 100% metabolic effeciency which no organism has. If you go #2 then that proves it.

[eric1978]

They aren't used up. That assumes 100% metabolic effeciency which no organism has. If you go #2 then that proves it.

That's true, and that's why you see Bear Grylls drinking his own pee on Man vs. Wild. But the body still breaks down whatever it ingests into its elemental origins. Every substance on earth is a composition of certain elements arranged into a particular molecular structure.

For example, when you sprinkle salt on your fries, you are eating salt, NaCl, which is a molecule. But what your body passes after digestion is not salt, it is sodium and chlorine, Na and Cl, which are elements. You pass whatever excess you don't use up. When you add baking soda to a batch of cookies you are baking, you are eating sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO3, but after digestion you pass sodium, hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. The same goes for other chemical compositions, including anti-depressants.

No, you don't use every bit of what you ingest, and that's why we urinate and go #2. But everything that we pass is found naturally occurring on the planet, and therefore is not harmful as long as you don't have huge amounts of an element in places it doesn't belong. That's why we are having the mercury in tuna problem. What people can add to waste that is potentially dangerous is bacteria and viruses that we carry around and spread to others.

[zander]

we don't break down everything into their component elements. if we did we would be flushing graphite rods down the commode. It works well to think of NaCl because it is a simple molecule but it is broken down into its components just by water providing more attractive places for the ions to hang around then each other. Other molecules (with covalent bonds) may not behave that way.

[eric1978]

we don't break down everything into their component elements. if we did we would be flushing graphite rods down the commode. It works well to think of NaCl because it is a simple molecule but it is broken down into its components just by water providing more attractive places for the ions to hang around then each other. Other molecules (with covalent bonds) may not behave that way.

You clearly know some stuff about chemistry, so I won't belabor the point, except to say that yes, if someone swallows a piece of plastic, it's gonna come out the same way it went in, but that's not the case with pharmaceuticals. They are designed to be broken down in order to take effect.

[zander]

exactly Eric you have it. It wouldn't do much good for the pharmaceuticals to be broken down into their components. They simply wouldn't be able to do their job. A certain amount of the milligrams in any pill can be expected to be destroyed by digestion, another amount can be counted on to be absorbed by the body into its systems, and another quantity passes through. These molecules are made often times to be readily taken up by us, and since our systems work much like those of fish, we all get a taste of everyone else's medicine.

[eric1978]

exactly Eric you have it. It wouldn't do much good for the pharmaceuticals to be broken down into their components. They simply wouldn't be able to do their job. A certain amount of the milligrams in any pill can be expected to be destroyed by digestion, another amount can be counted on to be absorbed by the body into its systems, and another quantity passes through. These molecules are made often times to be readily taken up by us, and since our systems work much like those of fish, we all get a taste of everyone else's medicine.

I'm not so sure that's necessarily true, but I think you've got me outmatched here in the chemistry department zander. I'll take your word for it, but I don't think I'll be losing any sleep over the study. I'm more worried about the crap they shoot up the cows with and the poison they spray on our produce. Unless you live on a farm and organically raise your own food, or you're a millionaire and can afford to buy that ridiculously expensive stuff, you're gonna be eating some stuff that we're not meant to be eating.

I'll keep eating it anyway and pretend it's not bad for me. Out of sight, out of mind.