Chemical contamination is perhaps the least obvious, but its threat reaches even the most unexpected corner. Of all, rivers and other aquatic ecosystems are the most sensitive. Human activity and its waste easily filter into nature through different channels and end up permeating ecosystems and threatening the enormous diversity of organisms that live in them.
There are many water analyzes that detect the pollutants most present in Spanish rivers, but the latest one carried out by the CSIC, in collaboration with SeoBirdlife and Ecoembes, alerts to the presence, above all, of an antidepressant and an insecticide (the first from of human activity and the second of agriculture) in areas classified for their high ecological value.
These two substances stand out for their overwhelming presence among a total of 59 types of contaminants that have emerged in 140 Important Areas for the Conservation of Birds and Biodiversity (IBA). The latter are areas of high ecological value because a significant part of the population of one or several bird species considered a priority by BirdLife regularly lives there.
The IBA areas that fared worst in this study, as they are most affected by the aforementioned contaminants, are the Campiña de Carmona (Seville), the Saladares de Guadalentín (Murcia) and the Hoces del Turia y los Serranos (Valencia).
The biggest problem for these places and their biodiversity is that these substances are especially harmful, not only because of their toxicity and neurotoxic effects on aquatic organisms, birds and mammals, but also because they are bioaccumulative. That is, they persist in the environment over the decades because they degrade with great difficulty.
Construction, agriculture and drugstore
The drugs most present in the waters were venlafaxine (the aforementioned antidepressant), carbamazepine (an antiepileptic also used to treat certain severe pain) and tramadol (an opioid analgesic prescribed for the treatment of severe pain). And their presence in the collected water samples is not anecdotal: they were present in 84% of the 411 analyzed.
Another of the classics in the analysis of aquatic sites detected were caffeine and nicotine, present in 76% of the samples analysed. These were followed by pesticides, perfluorinated compounds (components of Gore-Tex®, Teflon, or fire-fighting foams, and used in the food industry and in construction and household products) and benzophenone (sunscreen used in cosmetics and as additive in the plastics industry).
For María Dulsat-Masvidal, first author of the study and pre-doctoral researcher at IDAEA-CSIC, of all the substances mentioned, the most worrisome are “the insecticide chlorpyrifos due to its neurotoxic effect, the antidepressant venlafaxine because it affects aquatic organisms and is widely distributed in waters , and the perfluorinated compound PFOS with a high bioaccumulation capacity».
The researchers point out in their work that, although agriculture and human activity are the most frequent sources of toxicity, they also come from effluents from wastewater treatment plants.
Although the IBA areas are not in themselves a figure of protection, the authors of the study recall that they are the reference for the designation of protected areas within the Natura 2000 Network.
#Antidepressants #opioids #corrupt #water #highvalue #ecosystems #truth