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Dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico are testing positive for Fentanyl, and it could affect humans. Dr. Dana Orbach, an assistant professor of marine biology at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, says this likely has nothing to do with the trafficking of Fentanyl from Mexico, but rather the improper disposal of the drug, since wastewater treatment plants are not designed to remove those pharmaceuticals from the water.
“We don’t know with certainty, but it likely has to do with people consuming Fentanyl and other pharmaceuticals and them getting into our system,” Orbach said.
Dr. Orbach says this is not a new phenomenon.
“Some of these samples were more than a decade old. So that tells us that this has been a long-standing issue that has been largely overlooked,” Orbach said.
As for how the dolphins are becoming exposed to Fentanyl and other drugs, Dr. Orbach says it’s a chain reaction.
“They’re usually getting different contaminants from the prey. That would suggest that the prey are either drinking or consuming or absorbing these different drugs and then they reach their way all the way up the food chain, or the food web, to the apex predators like dolphins,” Orbach explained.
Many of the fish species that dolphins eat are also eaten by humans, which may mean that if Fentanyl and other drugs are not disposed of properly, they could end up in the fish that you might one day consume.
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