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• Posted December 9, 2024

Dolphins Are Testing Positive for Fentanyl

Most Americans understand how deeply the dangerous opioid fentanyl has permeated the illicit drug market.

Now, it's even infiltrated the bodies of Gulf of Mexico dolphins.

Researchers at Texas A&M University report that they've detected traces of fentanyl in the blubber of 30 of 89 bottlenose dolphins living off the coast of Texas and other states adjacent to the gulf.

The findings highlight the fact that "pharmaceuticals have become emerging micropollutants and are a growing global concern, as their presence has been reported in freshwater ecosystems, rivers and oceans worldwide," said study lead author Dara Orbach. She's assistant professor of marine biology at the university's Corpus Christi branch.

Her team published its findings recently in the journal iScience.

As Orbach explained in a university news release, the fatty blubber of dolphins is a good indicator of levels of ocean pollutants because it "can store contaminants and be sampled relatively minimally invasively in live animals."

They sampled the blubber of 86 live animals swimming in locales such as Redfish Bay and the Laguna Madre in Texas, and they also looked at blubber samples taken from deceased dolphins from off the Mississippi coast.

Fentanyl -- an opioid that is 100 times more potent than morphine -- was detected in the tissues of 18 of the live dolphins that were biopsied, and in all of the 12 post-mortem tissues, the researchers said.

The link between use by humans of fentanyl on the land and contamination of ocean waters seemed clear.

For example, "We did find one dead dolphin in Baffin Bay in South Texas within one year of the largest liquid fentanyl drug bust in U.S. history in the adjacent county," Orbach said.

Some form of drug was detected in 30% of all of the blubber samples retrieved, according to the study.

"The Mississippi dolphins comprised 40% of our total pharmaceutical detections, which leads us to believe this is a longstanding issue in the marine environment [in that area]," Orbach said.

The research also showed that concentrations of pharmaceuticals tended to be highest in marine areas where other environmental threats -- oil spills, vessel traffic and algal blooms -- were also common.

The health effects on dolphins of contamination with human medications isn't yet known. The researchers pointed out that dolphins eat the much of the same marine foods as people: Shrimp and fish.

“Chronic exposure to pharmaceuticals and their cumulative effects on marine mammals are not yet fully understood, yet their presence in three dolphin populations across the Gulf of Mexico underscores the need for large-scale studies to assess the extent and sources of contamination,” Orbach said.

More information

Find out more about fentanyl's dangers at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

SOURCE: Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, new release, Dec 4, 2024