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Caffeine Level In Sea Causes Concern
DarkHand writes "Researchers at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) have spent three years looking for trace remains of pharmaceuticals in drainage water and the sea near Tromsoe in northern Norway. The project has focused on 16 substances and a high concentration of caffeine was one of the surprising finds. Need a lift in the morning? Have a refreshing glass of seawater!"
- most people don't realize that most medicines pass through the kidneys unmetabolized
- water treatment doesn't remove these chemicals
- micro-pollution such as estrogens are known to affect fertility and fetal development of everything from fish to mammals, and probably also humans
Previous studies have shown similar findings in freshwater lakes and rivers, with similar medicines appearing including:Obviously, different organisms have different tolerances and reactions to various chemicals. However, some are quite universal. Certain neurotransmitters have vital roles in life functions all the way back to the earliest mammals and, in some cases, even single-celled organisms. Thus, it is not impossible for one chemical to have similar effects for an entire taxonomic branch of life.
I would tend to think it unlikely in sharks, however, since they are quite pointedly different organisms from even mammalian life, let alone humanity. But, like you said, who knows?
But we can resolve all this if someone just dissolves some caffeine into their fishtank. Just make sure they weren't too expensive.
Would a desalination plant remove the caffine?
Yes and no. Desalination by reverse osmosis or distillation would remove the caffeine (and many other pharmaceutical byproducts) from sea water when making drinking water. But the concentrated salt water dumped out of the desalination plant would still contain these pollutants.
Standard treatment plants used for making drinking water from freshwater would probably NOT remove caffeine or other pharmaceuticals. At best, the chlorination/oxygenation/UV purification process might degrade the pharma chemicals. At worst, these purification processes might convert the pharma chemicals into even more toxic analogs of the chemicals.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
and macadamia nuts.
In fact, macademia nuts are generally poisonous to humans as well. Every so often a mutated macademia tree produces non-poisonous nuts and those are the ones we groom and harvest from. (I'm not making this up).
One researcher in the article is quoted as saying, We have almost no information about what kind of problems caffeine can cause in nature. It is a poison and at very high concentrations it can affect the nervous system. We don't know the kind of environmental effect caffeine can have on the ecosystem and this is something that should be thoroughly investigated .
Based on what I know about biochemistry, this isn't necessarily going to be a big problem for humans. Assuming that the concentration of seawater is 100 micrograms (.0001 g) per liter and the lethal dose (LD) of caffeine is 4 grams in humans, one human would have to drink 40,000 litres of seawater to reach the lethal dose. That excludes the decomposition of caffeine in the body that would occur while drinking that much seawater.
Of course, there could be problems with biomagnification. If fish or other sea animals can't break down the caffeine, it may stay absorbed in their fat. Then, people who eat those sea creatures will have much larger of doses of caffeine at one time.
Personally, I wouldn't be concerned until they take into consideration all of the other factors that are involved. There are high concentrations of many molecules in seawater, but that isn't necessarily a problem.