
You've probably heard about a lot of things turning up in our drinking water and waterways. Usually, you'd probably rather not know what's lurking in your H2O --
prescription drugs, cocaine,
atrazine,
triclosan -- but a recent look at the Puget Sound found traces of something sweeter. Researchers from the University of Washington's Sound Citizen program, which examines how what we do on land affects what goes on in the water, discovered interesting fluctuations of more pleasant water contaminates around the holidays.
Coming up for Thanksgiving, levels of turkey seasonings thyme and sage will surge. Throughout the winter cinnamon levels are up. And for Fourth of July, the water gets inundated with remnants of waffle cones and caramel cones. Weekends year round see an increase of chocolate and vanilla flavorings, most likely due to parties. In fact, according to researchers, on average there's about six milligrams of artificial vanilla per liter of water in the Sound. How's that for flavored water?
In reality you won't taste it in your tap water. After any spices or flavors go down your drain, they travel to sewage treatment plants where most contaminants are removed, but that waste-water with the remains have to go somewhere.
Even though the report on spices in the Sound is filled with fun facts, at least more fun than facts about rocket fuel in our water, the point still remains that everything we do in our day-to-day lives is ultimately connected to the watershed. And while, so far, there's no evidence that spices harm marine life, scientists say salmon do have a sense of smell and plan to study the affects of cooking ingredients on octopus reproduction in the Puget Sound.
Photo by Yapps Cotta on Stock.xchng