The drugs we take daily—Advil, Innopran, Prozac and the Pill—harm the marine life that forms the base of the aquatic food chain, and those effects could move right up the chain to us.
Luciane Alves Maranho of the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Sao Paulo, Brazil, exposed bristle worms—segmented critters that live in the oozy sediment on the bottom of a lake or ocean—to trace amounts of drugs prescribed for seizures, pain relief, heart conditions, depression and birth control. Maranho found that our common medicines changed enzymes in the worms’ central nervous systems and adjusted their cellular energy. The study appears in the August 2015 issue of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety.
Read more at Modern Notion.
Vanessa Wamsley 