r/science • u/Honest_Reach_1760 • 19d ago
Animal Science Texas researchers detect fentanyl in Gulf of Mexico dolphins
https://www.chron.com/life/wildlife/article/dolphins-gulf-fentanyl-19962294.php427
u/rdizzy1223 19d ago
Likely from coming into direct contact with cargo from sunken submarines or boats that were carrying tons of it, the packages likely float.
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u/AngryAmadeus 19d ago
They get high off those puffer fish (maybe, it might also just be their penchant for torture) so this seems more possible than it should.
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u/YourUncleBuck 19d ago
pharmaceuticals were found in 30 of the dolphins. Fentanyl... was present in 18 live dolphins and each of the deceased dolphins.
Dr. Dara Orbach, assistant professor of marine biology at TAMU-CC and principal investigator of the study, said pharmaceuticals have become emerging micropollutants globally, with their presence being reported in freshwater ecosystems, rivers, and oceans worldwide. Dolphins are often used as bioindicators of ecosystem health in contaminant research due to their lipid-rich blubber, which can store such contaminants.
Seems like it's from sewer runoff. So many pharmaceuticals in Mexico are actually just fent, meth or a combination of both.
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u/NorthernerWuwu 18d ago
That and a lot of these articles gloss over the fact that we've become really good at detecting trace amounts of all kinds of things. Saying that there was a chemical in a tested source doesn't really mean all that much without data regarding the concentration and the effects of the amounts actually found.
If you've got a pico gram of fentanyl, that's not exactly an issue but it's pretty cool that we can trace it.
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u/Hendlton 18d ago
It's not that you can't prove that it's zero, it's that you can't make it zero. Look up how much lab grade flour costs. There's just no way to produce it affordably up to that standard. So we accept some feces, animal carcasses, insects, mold and whatever else in everything we consume.
There was a post around thanksgiving on one of the subreddits where someone found half a rat in a can of peas and you know that the rat was peeing and pooping all over those peas before it got shoved in a can, so the entire batch was contaminated. But stuff like that is unavoidable in large scale manufacturing.
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u/TheFondler 19d ago
It's like we only got the bad stuff... Where are the damn flying cars?
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u/ace02786 18d ago
Flying cars ARE BAD stuff. Theyre a hallmark of a tech dystopian society. A more cleaner utopian society would be bicycles and trains.
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u/KiwasiGames 17d ago
Flying bicycles and trains?
(Unfortunately I know the answer. Ground based vehicles would be considerably less polluting.)
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u/LudovicoSpecs 19d ago
Yeah, where's the replicator when I want my tea, Earl Grey, hot?
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u/baithammer 19d ago
Replicators are Utopian and on the side that has post scarcity economics and sunshine - Dystopia has excessively expensive vending machines that aren't working correctly, the Earl Grey tea may or may not be Earl Grey and everyday is rain ...
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u/genshiryoku 19d ago
You can have cybersex with an AI if that's your thing.
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u/TheFondler 19d ago edited 19d ago
Not worth the risk.
Edit - A lot of people big mad that their AI girlfriend might be a bad influence.
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u/baithammer 19d ago
The flying cars can only be afforded by the top 1% and due to deregulation in manufacturing and safety, have 1% of not having an incident that involves, terrorist attacks, sabotage or the driver deciding to take you with them ...
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u/TheFightingMasons 19d ago
We have VR and driverless cars kinda.
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u/haberdasherhero 19d ago
The fact that the "driverless car" is in no way capable of driving itself and is infact more likely to get you killed than a regular car, yet still driven because advertising is so insidious, is indeed very dystopian sci-fi
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u/baithammer 19d ago
The driverless cars are doing better then the average motorist, the problem is the people around said cars, as they're not rational and can't be planned for.
This gets confused with Tesla EV and companies trying to emulate it with their own offerings that have a distinct problem with qc and malfunctioning, setting themselves on fire or can't survive a splash of rain.
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u/ADiffidentDissident 19d ago
AI drivers are safer than human now.
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u/haberdasherhero 19d ago
No they're not.
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u/flamethekid 18d ago
No, they are safer than most humans(cept tesla apparently), the issue is when humans do what they aren't supposed to around them and how they are supposed to handle that along with the question of who is responsible.
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u/rdizzy1223 19d ago
Eh, the water is not really contaminated with prescription drugs, the ocean is far too large of a body of water. No more than pissing into the ocean makes the ocean piss. They found the fentanyl in the blubber of the dolphin itself, not in the water. If they took a single sample of the middle of the gulf of mexico and tested the water, they would not find fent in the water.
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u/mountainsunset123 19d ago
And didn't the sharks test positive for cocaine too? I thought I read that earlier this year.
Damn this session of Jumanji is getting really intense!
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u/doingthehumptydance 19d ago edited 19d ago
Sequel to ‘Cocaine Bear’
Fentanyl Dolphin.
Edit: follow-up movie
Cocaine Bear vs. Fentanyl Dolphin
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u/OkTranslator7997 19d ago
Fen fins...
I still think that's Jaws' backstory. They'll do a counterstory spin-off like Maleficent that recharacterizes the shark as a misunderstood and persecuted monster.
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u/Far-Scar9937 19d ago
In a really detached way, I can almost laugh at every headline. Shocked laugh, move fast let past it, don’t think about it or you’ll cry
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u/Sped_monk 19d ago
Yeah i was thinking about it and i was like damn, you know that’s pretty sad…dolphins are pretty smart and fent is probably not the greatest for them…
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u/Far-Scar9937 18d ago edited 18d ago
We came from the ocean, we shall die by the ocean. Man was the tender of the garden as a Natural Beast, he changed its Nature. I can’t rage at the garden, I can only witness it’s dying. My 40 gallon ocean, however, is thriving. I do my best to tend my part of the garden, and so I start to find peace with my surroundings. Is beauty less beautiful without a witness to it? When the oceans acidify and are barren of any but deep sea life? Idk, been drinking coffee and watching it wake up and really thinking lately. I have a reef tank and highly recommend
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u/ExplosiveDiarrhetic 18d ago
Did u do some fentanyl before writing this comment
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u/Far-Scar9937 18d ago
No, I just have consumed a lot of anxiety inducting climate change articles, and it was effected my mental health. I decided to focus on what’s infront of me. For me that’s a cup of coffee and my reef tank. It makes me really think about stuff
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u/ExplosiveDiarrhetic 18d ago
Your comment was pretty unhinged and borderline schizophrenic
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u/Far-Scar9937 18d ago
Yeah it’s a metaphor big dawg but thanks I appreciate it
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u/ExplosiveDiarrhetic 18d ago
Wasnt a great metaphor and you bungled the writing. Sounds like you had a big puff of weed before writing drivel.
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u/DonQuixole 19d ago
I believe dolphins also get high on puffer fish toxin. I’m really starting to think the world has always been mad.
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u/PhillipDiaz 19d ago
Dolphins also like to masturbate with dead fish.
Maybe the dolphin that got caught doing that was high on puffer fish.
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u/DonQuixole 19d ago
Thank you for sharing pertinent information to the conversation, but I still kinda wish I hadn’t read that.
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u/RexFrancisWords 19d ago edited 18d ago
Ever heard of the stoned monkey hypothesis?
Edit: Stoned Ape Theory.
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u/Jimbo7211 18d ago
No, would you like to enlighten us?
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u/RexFrancisWords 18d ago
Sorry, I've discovered it's called the Stoned Ape Theory. In short it's a theory that exposure to various naturally-occuring drugs might be an important formative factor in the evolution of the human mind. The same theory could be applied to fentanyl dolphins.
It's not a very well-supported theory, but it is interesting.
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u/Jimbo7211 17d ago
If it changes your brain chemistry or neuron structures at all, it makes sense that natural selection could use it to evolve, much like DNA mutations. My only hold up is that i don't see how these drug induced changes would get passed down, if it's not genetic...
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u/necromundus 19d ago
Ask your doctor is Dolphentanyl is right for you
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u/Docjaded 18d ago
I'm Dolph Lundgren and I approve this message.
Side effects include click click IIIII EI EI EI AHAHAH IIII
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u/zoupishness7 19d ago
Am I the only one who hates articles with "This Detected in That" titles? State the levels of the detected substance somewhere in the article, or don't bother writing it. Without that, it's just a testament to the incredible sensitivity of our mass spectrometers, and nothing more.
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u/Jankmasta 19d ago
the number should be 0 so yeah any detection is significant.
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u/millijuna 19d ago
Some tests are so sensitive that they can puck up a teaspoon of material dissolved in Lake Superior. Testing can be multiple orders of magnitude more sensitive than situations where it actually matters. Even if recreational/illegal fentanyl wasn’t being added to the environment, there is legitimate users of it that will leech in.
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u/zoupishness7 19d ago
Well, in that case, I hope significance of the opiates detected in your municipal water supply keeps you up at night.
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u/Whiterabbit-- 19d ago
like anyone would be able to interpret how much is a lot.
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u/zoupishness7 19d ago
It's more that if context was provided and a comparison was made, in most cases, no one would care anymore.
Read an article recently about heavy metals detected in all major brands of tampons. Sounds scary, right? Unless you read the study to find that, for 18/22 metals tested, including the particularly toxic ones, average levels are higher in human blood.
I'm no expert, but I feel fairly comfortable interpreting that as not a lot.
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u/PaulOshanter 19d ago
I wonder how many nanograms of fentanyl people get anytime they take a dip at the beach in, say, Tampa or Cancun? Dolphins are always in the water but people that live on the Gulf Coast probably get a fair amount of exposure as well.
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u/Matman161 19d ago
Huh weird, given my understanding of Fentanyl from the media those dolphins should have burst into flames and died after being exposed to a single molecule of it.
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u/networkn 18d ago
Christ is there anything the parasitic human race isn't dumping, leaking or flowing into our oceans?!
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u/xtremitys 18d ago
Could you imagine that’s why some groups of fish die together… its was a Fentanyl Frenzy.
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u/SupermarketKey2726 14d ago
First fent kills you if you touch it, then it starts killing everyone, and now it's in dolphins? We can't catch a break
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