Sharks test positive for cocaine: What’s happening off the coast of Brazil?

The waters of our planet are contaminated with all kinds of waste of human creationand sadly this fact is no longer a fact in itself. Big surpriseHowever, when a group of researchers detected the presence of cocaine in the aquatic environment near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and they expressed a bigger problem: how drug use in cities can also influence the wild life.

This is a discovery that scientists at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute (IOC/Fiocruz) were discovered while studying the environmental status of the area, as part of a series of efforts to understand its impact on marine life.

Recent studies had detected high concentrations of cocaine in Brazilian waters, and had also detected its presence in other marine species, such as mussels. For this reason, the experts used samples from 13 sharks which had already been collected previously to check, for the first time, whether this animal was also affected. The results were very revealing.

Positives for cocaine

Thirteen specimens of the species Rhizoprionodon lalandii collected from the coast of the neighborhood of playground of the Bandeiranteswest of Rio de Janeiro, tested positive for cocaine, and 12 of them also in benzoylecgoninethe main metabolite of this drug in the body, in an analysis carried out by the IOC Environmental Health Assessment and Promotion Laboratory.

Sharks, commonly known as Brazilian sharpnose dogfishcontained these substances in the liver and, in greater concentration, also in the muscles. While the liver transforms what is ingested, the overexposure of these animals to cocaine is evident in their accumulation in muscle tissuesso it should be found abundantly in the water they inhabit.

In addition, the amount of cocaine was higher than that of benzoylecgonine, indicating that The drug was poured directly into the water and did not come from a metabolization process in humans, such as through urine.

For all these reasons, experts believe that the contamination occurred from the city through wastewater dumped into the sea, and in particular from Rio de Janeiro, since This species of shark resides permanently near the coasts and does not follow migratory patterns.

According to the most recent United Nations World Drug Report (UNODC) Brazil It is one of the countries that consumes the most cocaine in the world, and therefore there is a risk that these results are not exclusive to the city of Rio. The research could be extended to the rest of Brazil.

Fuente: National Geographic