> The potential for any effect on the creatures was "likely to be low", they said.

Typical popsci article. A clickbaity title followed by a hint at the disappointing truth far enough down the page that 95% of readers never see it.

I think you missed the point, which is that cocaine wasn't expected there at all. Its presence indicates that there is some way for it to get into the environment that was not anticipated.

It means that now we need to figure out how it gets there, and whether or not that is a problem, and if it is how to stop it. Just because it is probably not a problem for the shrimp doesn't mean it is not a problem, because it is unlikely that whatever is releasing it into the environment does so in a way that only reaches shrimp.

It’s most likely from waste water treatment plant effluent discharged into the rivers (or upstream) in question. Those plants are typically not capable of breaking down pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, nor artificially produced hormones (such as that found in birth control pills).

The potential effect may be low for shrimp but the question is what is the effect on other organisms that consume shrimp in mass quantities and which, themselves, might ultimately end up being consumed by humans. Biomagnification has long been a concern of biologists with respect to pollutants such as DDT and mercury. [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomagnification

That's typically a problem for pollutants that can't be expelled or neutralized by the body. Cocaine is organic so it probably won't have the same issue.

The dose makes the poison.

They are probably using a very sensitive detector. If they try the same analysis in a person that never took cocaine, would they detect the cocaine absorbed from the cash and other tiny amounts in shared objects?

> The dose makes the poison.

Sure, but what is the effective dose for shrimp? As the article says: more research is needed.

I do recall a similar article about Prozac in American rivers, and there it was shown to be enough to affect the local wildlife.

[IANAB] Get the minimal dose for humans or rats and reduce it linearly to the weight of the shrimps. Perhaps it's better to use the concentration of cocaine in the human brain instead of the total dose divided by the total weigh. (Shrimps don't have bones, is that important?, IANAB)

The neurotransmisors are more similar in all animals than expected, so I guess a similar concentration in the brain is a good assumption. 1/1000 of the human concentration is probably safe for shrimps.

An alternative is to study it in the lab. Get a few shrimps and get them high. How hard can it be?

My guess is that this study is more useful for the police to get a general map of drug use than to see if shrimps are in danger. I guess that the shrimps concentrate the drugs, so it's easy to collect some water and filter the shrimps and put them in a blender, than collecting a bigger sample of water and concentrating it.

One you get down to parts per billion/trillion you can find just about everything in ordinary water.

According to some "medical" woo-mongers, that is enough to make it the strongest cocaine ever.

Give it a few years and the detection system will become commonplace and you'll read things like "the suspect's sushi was confirmed to contain opioids using a field testing kit" in police reports.

Well, there already have been cases where overly sensitive testing kits resulted in false positives because people had eaten food with poppy seeds

Disappointing! Even the BBC is doing clickbaity titles!

I'm sure this is not the first title that comes to your mind if you are writing this article.

> Other illicit drugs, such as ketamine, were also widespread in the shrimp.

Interesting on the widespread aspects here.

Yeah, the drug prohibition isn't exactly working out.

Presumably, mantis shrimps :)

I’m thinking the lab tech or field researcher most probably accidentally contaminated the samples

I think of the criminal case years and years ago where someone was arrested with a large sum of cash, and they asserted it was drug money because cocaine was found on the bills.

The defending lawyer just took a random sample of money from circulation and found the same thing.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-11-13-me-62172-...

and if you look further, even ATMs get in on the game, by spreading it on other bills that pass through the mechanisms:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cocaine-on-money/

So by the same token, I wonder how many ways the samples can be contaminated, the obvious one being someone touches money first.

I guess now I know why I like shrimp so much (/s)

Anyone who's seen Disney's "The Little Mermaid" won't be surprised. Crustaceans love to party.

Darling it's better, Down where it's wetter, Take it from me ;)

I don't know if I should laugh at this. Ok, i'm gonna laugh, hah!