New Zealand Celsias

Once upon a time, in a land almost no one living has ever seen, the rivers and streams of North America were so pure one could drink with cupped hands or a tin cup. One risked getting “beaver fever”, or Giardiasis, but few died from it, and pioneer medicine in the form of propolis (from bee hives) was remarkably effective.   

Fast forward to the 21^st century and there are no large, well-knownrivers   (or lakes) in which one should swim, let alone drink. An exception can be made for some of the sources of these bodies of water like the Mississippi (Lake Itasca in Northern Minnesota), the Missouri (the longest river in the United States, in Three Forks, Montana), the Colorado (high in the Rocky Mountains), and the Arkansas (again in the Rockies, at Lake County, Colorado).

Even here, with the exception of the Mississippi River originating in the fairly desolate area of Itasca County, Minnesota, the Colorado River’s starting point at 10,000 feet, and the Arkansas River at about the same altitude, exceptions are more hopeful than actual. Over a century of medicinal compounds dumped into rivers all across the nation – either as excess from production, from hospitals and nursing homes, from pharmacy errors, or even as the effluent from America’s sinks and toilets (which never get removed at the treatment plant) – has created a pharmacological nightmare in which fish forget their most atavistic behaviors as wary creatures which are most successful as hunters when in a group, and take off on their own.

Swedish Study Shows Strange Behavior   

As a Swedish study   notes, a psychiatric drug called Oxazepam (a benzodiazepine anxiolytic formula) has triggered these surprising results in wild European perch.   

The class of benzodiazepines as a whole are used to counteract anxiety and/or panic attacks, as well as mitigate insomnia, depression and social anxiety disorders. Some of the benzodiazepines are very short-acting, no more than four hours, and others can last for days.

The wild perch, arguably the most popular fish in Sweden in terms of freshwater eating, seems to thrive in bodies of water near densely populated areas. This means fishermen don’t have to travel for hours or days to drop a line in the water, and the wild perch has the added advantage of a mild flavor and excellent texture for a city-dwelling fish.

The one drawback, as far as fishermen are concerned, is its wariness. It travels only in large groups and will feed only from populations of phytoplankton and the like that are large enough to satisfy the entire group.

Unfortunately, this very self-defensive behavior disappears when perch are exposed to Oxazepam. Then they choose to leave their packs and strike out on their own; an admirable spirit among early American pioneers, but not too healthy for fish.

How the Study Was Conducted

This degree of daring was measured first, by exposing fish   to benzodiazepine-laced water, and then corralling them in a small tank with an open door leading to a much larger, roomier tank.

The tranquilized fish are not only unafraid to leave their companions (which scientists say translates to a reduction in the fear of being eaten), but lack the innate wariness and group-behavior also demonstrated by aquatic fowl (like ducks and geese), which fly in a U shape and turn almost simultaneously when discovering a threat like a hunter with a gun.

The Swedish study also makes a point of the fact that “a variety of pharmaceuticals” remain bioavailable to living tissue even when diluted in water, and this availability produces behavioral effects much like those (desired changes) seen in humans. Perch, as a result, may become complacent, or fearless. They also tend to eat faster, which may have an effect on the surrounding biome.

In short, the study states, anti-anxiety drugs like Oxazepam affect behaviors that have an effect on both general ecologies and very specific evolutionary cycles. That is, where fish are less timid and eat faster, their prey will need to reproduce more rapidly. And their predators, both aquatic and human, will find more food available and may as a result reproduce more rapidly as well.

Viewed across a much larger biome, as for example the entire United States, it is unknown how this chemical stew – made up of pharmaceutical discards from many sources – is affecting living creatures. It is probably safe to say that no one drinking tap water on a regular basis will come down with some drug interaction requiring hospitalization  . That is the province of the increasingly dangerous hospital medication errors venue, or pharmacy error claims. But there are sure to be impacts: nothing lives in a vacuum.

What Might the Future Hold?

Humans are on the large side of the natural world, and can consume more pharmaceuticals before they alter behaviors.  Smaller members – fish, birds and mice, for example – are affected by much smaller pharmaceutical doses; a fact that is even more true when the drug in question in is as powerful as Ambien, a non-benzodiazepine with a similar molecular structure and strong hypnotic and sedative effects.

It would be ironic and tragic if these scientists were to find that worldwide ocean fish shortages were not due merely to overfishing but to pharmaceutical contaminants in the water. Current research suggests that bottom-feeders like cod, place and sole in the UK have been reduced by 94 percent. This means that an increasingly hungry world – much of which subsists on fish and insects as the only protein – must get along on only six percent of what was available before 1996 – what the BBC has called “the year of Peak Ocean Fish.”