SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Cocaine, Spices, Hormones Found in Drinking Water
from National Geographic News
How's this for a sweet surprise? A team of researchers in Washington State has found traces of cooking spices and flavorings in the waters of Puget Sound. University of Washington associate professor Richard Keil heads the Sound Citizen program, which investigates how what we do on land affects our waters.
Keil and his team have tracked "pulses" of food ingredients that enter the sound during certain holidays. For instance, thyme and sage spike during Thanksgiving, cinnamon surges all winter, chocolate and vanilla show up during weekends (presumably from party-related goodies), and waffle-cone and caramel-corn remnants skyrocket around the Fourth of July.
The Puget Sound study is one of several ongoing efforts to investigate the unexpected ingredients that find their way into the global water supply.
Read more...
Click here to listen to podcasts of American Scientist Pizza Lunches, informal lectures where scientists present new research to non-scientists. Originally intended for science communicators in the Research Triangle Park region of North Carolina, the audio slideshows are now available to anyone online. New talks are posted periodically during the academic year.
Science in the Media
Newspapers:
Magazines and Web Sites:
The Science-Media Intersection:
Subscribe to Our Content!
Visit our RSS Feeds page to choose among 13 customized feeds, or create a free My AmSci account to request an email notice whenever a specified author, department or discipline appears online.