Admittedly, we at Music Times have never gotten to concerned about drug use at the music festivals we attend. We'd rather there be no serious health problems (lest that event be shut down for next year) but if they want to take drugs, it doesn't effect us, right? Well...an interesting study from Environmental Science & Technology indicates that high drugs use at festivals may also impact local water supplies.
Here's the basic thing you need to understand: Anything you ingest, orally or otherwise, is coming out. Just as food makes its way through your body, drugs such as MDMA (ecstasy) will also exit your body in trace amounts. And that means the water supply in the area you reside will end up with higher levels of whatever your drug of choice is. Cities such as Portland for example, the fourth-largest coffee-consumption-per-capita city in the U.S., will have higher levels of caffeine in its water. Pharmaceuticals and illegal drugs are often more difficult for local water treatment plants to deal with.
The researchers behind this study only used one city for its observation but the results were dramatic enough that we can safely assume those crazy kids and their drugs were to blame. Kenting, a city in South Taiwan, hosts scores of tourists (around 600,000) every year for its Spring Scream pop music festival.
Among the substances found in higher quantities following the event: MDMA, caffeine and ketamine (a painkiller). These weren't slight bumps either: The amount of MDMA in the water supply jumped from 89.1 nanograms-per-liter to 940 ng/l. Granted, nano grams are small, small percentages, but that's a more than 1000 percent increase.
Does this have an impact on the populace at large and aquatic life? Researchers aren't sure yet.
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