Drugs and the Environment: Time for 'Phase 5' Trials?

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Susanne Quick pens a great story that really should be picked up more widely. She follows U. Wisconsin researchers who drop miniscule amounts of widely prescribed medicines - those known to pass right through the human body and, unaltered by waste water processing systems, right into the fresh water in nature. The effects, of dosing that is roughly the same as what is found in many fresh water environments, are scary:

They are investigating the effects of common drugs ... because they are designed to affect the biology of a living organism - to reduce headaches, control seizures or suppress coughs - [the] researchers think they could have an impact on fish and other wildlife.

Standing in her lab at the WATER Institute, an old tile warehouse on the banks of the Kinnickinnic River, Klaper reviewed the minnow experiment. She pointed to the fishes' gills, which were straining open and shut in a desperate attempt to filter oxygen in the deadly murk surrounding them.

"The water was cloudy by the time we got in the next morning," said Chris Rees, a research assistant, recalling the day after a lipid regulator was introduced into their tank. But the milkiness wasn't from the drug itself, Klaper said. It was the physical manifestation of the stressed and dying fish - a cloudy stew of mucous and other piscine secretions.

It wasn't as if Klaper had heavily dosed the fish. She had diluted the drug to one part per billion, or the equivalent of a drop in a railroad tanker. That's a concentration that has been detected in waters from Europe to South America, and as close to home as Lake Ontario and the Detroit River ... "We're really just at the beginning" of understanding the effects of these drugs on wildlife, she said.

But if her drug-exposed fathead minnows are any indicator of the future, it's not looking good

[thanks S Faye]