Presence of nicotine and antidepressants detected in Antarctic waters | Hacker News Reader

Presence of nicotine and antidepressants detected in Antarctic waters

bionity.com

61 pointsgeox18 comments

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438942...

Paper being referenced

Edit: "Although long-range atmospheric transport processes of some CEC classes like fragrances [49] and PFASs [55] from their sources in mid-latitudes may occur, CEC presence in the Antarctic region is mainly associated with on-site research and tourism activities. Ca. 5500 people stay over the summer in 76 research stations spread throughout the territory [11]. "

you'd be as well if you were melting at that rate!

It's interesting they mention UV filters being found in the water - hadn't realised that this might affect the proliferation of algae and the likes, sounds quite bad

diclofenac surprises me because it's not used much anymore.

I wonder if there is a huge time delay going on here, and the contamination found was from doses administered decades ago.

Per the great Wikipedia, “In 2020, [diclofenac] was the 72nd most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 9 million prescriptions.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diclofenac

I have been taking diclofenac every day for more than 10 years. It is not an uncommon medicine here in Brazil.

It apparently kills vultures and some other animals, and there is a push to discontinue using it.

I wasn't trying to say it's not used! I was just surprised to see it in the very short list of medications they found, rather than some other more commonly used medication.

Ok, then keep it away from vultures and other animals. Not the best reason to discontinue if it brings relief to people

I'm not in charge of deciding that :)

But the entire point of this article is that when you take a drug it doesn't always vanish (metabolize) it often ends up in the sewer system, and from there it affects vultures and other animals.

As far as I know, the main ecological problem is its veterinary use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diclofenac#As_a_veterinary_dru...

It is common in US too. It is harmful when used in animals, but even that is not globally accepted. Plenty of countries use it for animals too.

Diclo. is an unimaginable useful drug. It has some properties that make it almost irreplaceable for certain types of pain that are broadly experienced in the population.

Rheumatic pain is usually hard to treat and many patients end up with a whole mix of pain drugs and many many times diclo makes the whole mix work.

There's a lot of diclofenac gels/creams available without a prescription for topical use. Pretty popular stuff in Europe, and maybe elsewhere.

A lot probably just washes off. But it's a lot of milligrams in 1%, 2% or 3% tube formulation vs. tablets that are usually 50mg or 100mg.

On the ice, I'm guessing a lot of joint pain. Not just from falls, but just walking on ice and snow strains different muscles than you usually use to walk around.

Nicotine and caffeine are both natural products, produced by a wide range of plants (yes, humans grow tobacco, coffee, tea, etc. to get them, but there are a lot of other plants that contain one of these, usually at lower levels). One would expect to find low levels of these chemicals in any sample of ocean water even without human activity.

Since they don't say how much they found (parts per million? parts per billion? parts per trillion? less?), it's hard to even guess whether the levels should be "concerning".

Q: Does the atmosphere acts as a gigantic distillation column with respect to organic compounds, on a equator-to-poleward transect?

> "IrritatedGPT: While it is true that the atmosphere can exhibit some similarities to a distillation column in terms of the transport and distribution of organic compounds, this is a ridiculously oversimplified analogy... no I can't access the proprietary journals... very well, here's an explanation of how the atmosphere can exhibit distillation-like behavior on an equator-to-poleward transect... look up PCBs and other organochlorines in Beluga whales if you think I'm hallucinating. FFS."

I’d be depressed too if I had to work there

A close friend spent a winter "at the pole" helping build the IceCube Neutrino Observatory[1,2]. Says it's definitely not for everyone but he loved it.

[1] https://icecube.wisc.edu/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory

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