CANBERRA University Professor Ross Thompson (pictured) has reminded the public that unwanted or expired medicines can be returned to any PBS-approved community pharmacy as part of the Return Unwanted Medicines (RUM) project, a system designed to protect our food chain.
Thompson is Chairman of Water Science at the University of Canberra's Institute for Applied Ecology and was quoted in The Melbourne Age.
He warned that pharmaceutical residue contaminating waterways could be impacting on human health as drugs are transferred through the food chain, commenting on data from two recent research projects.
An example from one of the studies cited was that of a platypus living in a stream on Melbourne's fringe found to have received more than half a human dose of antidepressants every day.
Affected fish are quite easily identified, Thompson said.
"We know, for instance, that fish that are treated with antidepressants are brighter coloured, they breed more readily and they're happy little fish.
"But they also aren't anxious enough, so they get predated at a higher rate."
"We have shown in the work in Melbourne that these compounds are finding their way into food chains and getting up into fish," Thompson said.
"People who are then eating those fish will be getting a dose of an active compound."
He expressed particular concern about antibiotics being flushed down the toilet or sink, so they end up in rivers and creeks, where they are ingested by aquatic life.
Antibiotics in waterways have the potential to generate resistant organisms, he warned.
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