{"id":179071,"date":"2018-05-25T18:28:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T23:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/05\/25\/and-now-we-have-dope-fiend-mollusks\/"},"modified":"2018-05-25T18:28:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T23:28:00","slug":"and-now-we-have-dope-fiend-mollusks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/05\/25\/and-now-we-have-dope-fiend-mollusks\/","title":{"rendered":"And Now We Have Dope Fiend Mollusks"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Mussels in Puget Sound <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-us-canada-44256765\">have tested positive for opioids<\/a>, which raises the obvious question, how the hell do you get them to pee into a cup?<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Scientists at the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife have found that mussels in Seattle&#8217;s waters are testing positive for opioids.<\/p>\n<p>The finding suggests &#8220;a lot of people&#8221; are taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound, researchers say.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists used mussels as a way to test pollution in Seattle&#8217;s waters and discovered high enough oxycodone levels for the shellfish to test positive.<\/p>\n<p>Mussels do not metabolise opioids, but some fish can become addicted.<\/p>\n<p>Mussels are filter-feeders, which means they filter water for nutrients to nourish themselves. In the process, they end up storing pollutants in their tissues, which makes them a prime indicator species. <\/p>\n<p>State researchers distributed clean mussels around the Puget Sound and extracted them months later to test the waters.<\/p>\n<p>Of the 18 locations scientists used, three showed traces of oxycodone. The drug traces were not enough to get any humans high from consumption, but enough to indicate a problem, officials said. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There is a stand-up comedy routine in this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mussels in Puget Sound have tested positive for opioids, which raises the obvious question, how the hell do you get them to pee into a cup? Scientists at the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife have found that mussels in Seattle&#8217;s waters are testing positive for opioids. The finding suggests &#8220;a lot of people&#8221; &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[638,517,688,421],"class_list":["post-179071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-biology","tag-drugs","tag-pollution","tag-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179071"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179071\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}