I couldn't resist forwarding this. It's a humorous take on a serious issue. (I have not attempted to verify that this is a legitimate source. Here is the link to the article:
http://www.uswaternews.com/archives/arcquality/7univofxx1.html)
Univ. of Washington researchers say holiday cookies have impact on Puget Sound
January 2007 U.S. Water News Online
SEATTLE -- Researchers at the University of Washington say all that holiday baking and eating has an environmental impact -- Puget Sound is being flavored by cinnamon and vanilla. "Even something as fun as baking for the holiday season has an environmental effect," said Rick Keil, an associate professor of chemical oceanography. "When we bake and change the way we eat, it has an impact on what the environment sees. To me it shows the connectedness." Keil and UW researcher Jacquelyn Neibauer's weekly tests of treated sewage sent into the sound from the West Point treatment plant in Magnolia showed cinnamon, vanilla and artificial vanilla levels rose between Nov. 14 and Dec. 9, with the biggest spike right after Thanksgiving. Natural vanilla showed the largest increase, "perhaps indicative of more home baking using natural vanilla," Keil and Neibauer wrote. "This conjecture is weakly supported by a verbal communication between Rick Keil and an employee of the Wallingford QFC (supermarket) who felt that natural vanilla peaked during the holiday seasons," the scientists' preliminary report says. "This will be investigated more thoroughly." So far, the research has turned up no evidence that snickerdoodles are harming sea creatures, but their research does lead to some serious environmental questions. Fish rely heavily on their sense of smell to locate food, for example, and, in the case of salmon, to find their way back to their home stream to spawn. "All the spices have odors associated with them, so it's interesting to ask whether they are there in sufficient concentration (for fish) to smell them," Keil said. Using benchmarks from a published scientific study, they were able to estimate that people in Seattle and a few outlying areas served by the sewage plant consumed the daily equivalent of about 160,000 butter- or chocolate-chip-type cookies and about 80,000 cookies containing cinnamon during the Thanksgiving weekend. The county did not spend any money on the study, but officials at King County's Wastewater Treatment Division said they were happy to cooperate because they expected the results to reinforce their message -- What goes down the drain has to come out somewhere. That goes both for pesticides and industrial chemicals as well as vanilla and cinnamon. "It's an ability to look at a whole population's behavior through one pipe," said Randy Schuman, a county science and technical support manager who helped arrange the wastewater testing. Keil's findings present a light side of what scientists say is potentially a serious situation. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies have documented that antibiotics, contraceptives, perfumes, painkillers, antidepressants and other substances pass through the sewage system into waterways. King County researchers several years took caffeine measurements to try to learn whether the city's coffee drinking habits had any effect on the sound. Caffeine was found in more than 160 of 216 samples in water as deep as 640 feet. "It was everywhere," Schuman said. "There's an effect (from) humans on the sound and it's almost ubiquitous. It's not just at the end of the (discharge) pipe."
Cookie Extracts in Wastewater
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I don't doubt this article is true. The important comment in it is below. The issue of low levels of chemicals being measured in water is getting serious consideration world-wide. Some of the worst offenders are endocrine disruptors such as estradiol from birth control pills. One way these things are getting into our water is through flushing - many compounds are not metabolized by our bodies and go through us unchanged and this is most likely the source of these flavorings in King County's water. Waste water treatment plants are not equipped to remove many of these compounds from water. Although there is no definitive connection between these low levels in our water and human health, the evidence for their effects on other species such as amphibians and fish is undeniable. If you are interested in this, you might want to check out EPA's PPCP (pharmaceuticals and personal care products) web site at: http://www.epa.gov/nerlesd1/chemistry/pharma/index.htm I administer a national list serve called Pharmwaste. It is open to all and you can join by going to this address and following the directions: http://lists.dep.state.fl.us/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharmwaste
If you just want to have an immediate personal effect on this issue, please refrain from ever flushing unwanted medicines down the drain. Contact your local environmental agency for their recommendations for disposal. If you contact me (please don't reply to the whole list serve), I will send you the disposal guidelines that Florida DEP has developed for consumers.
Thanks for the opportunity to address this issue on this list serve.
Laurie
"...officials at King County's Wastewater Treatment Division said they were happy to cooperate because they expected the results to reinforce their message -- What goes down the drain has to come out somewhere. That goes both for pesticides and industrial chemicals as well as vanilla and cinnamon."
Laurie J. Tenace
Environmental Specialist
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
2600 Blair Stone Road,
MS 4555 Tallahassee,
Florida 32399-2400
PH: (850) 245-8759
FAX: (850) 245-8811
[email protected]