The Pacific Ocean Is Polluted With Coffee

An anonymous reader writes in with this excerpt from Inhabitat:"People aren't the only ones getting a jolt from caffeine these days; in a new study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin, scientists found elevated concentrations of caffeine in the Pacific Ocean in areas off the coast of Oregon. With all those coffee drinkers in the Pacific Northwest, it should be no surprise that human waste containing caffeine would ultimately make its way through municipal water systems and out to sea – but how will the presence of caffeine in our oceans affect human health and natural ecosystems?"

polluted is a bad word

[deodiaus2]

More like "engergized"?
What do you think we caffeine drinkers should call ourselves?

I have a hard time believing

[rolfwind]

that human coffe/tea consumption and pee will have an effect on the world's oceans.

Other human activities, yes, definitely. But not this.

Synthetic Drugs?

[bdabautcb]

While this is not surprising and questionably news, I am a little more worried about the years and years of synthetic, biologically active drugs in the water. Birth control hormones don't exactly just disappear after you swallow them, and I know that they and other classes of petroleum based drugs have shown hormonal activity not only in mammals, but amphibians, fish, and birds. Though a world with huge breasted marine mammals would be cool, I am more concerned about the chemicals other than coffee that are following the same pathways and reaching the entire world. Miles deep into the ocean, thousands of miles through the atmosphere, there is really no where on the planet that has not been affected in at least a minor way by the expansion of human industry.

Re:polluted is a bad word

[Anonymous Coward]

Junkies.

Re:Starbucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there's a better chance of you being modded "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Re:Starbucks

[arkane1234]

Translation:

I know I'll probably get modded troll for this but good luck separating [people I'm the opposite of, and hold distain for] in [state below the states being written about] from [place I heard is attached to the object in the issue].

Personally I've never [insert way of using the object in question]. I know it has [something obvious about nearly everything], but [insert something only vaguely related to the object in question].

Re:I have a hard time believing

[Anonymous Coward]

Except its not just the human gut filtered coffee being dumped. Its also the used coffee grounds.

Re:Amounts

[NFN_NLN]

In the ocean, they found 44.7 ng/L. "Caffeine concentrations in rivers and estuaries draining to the coast measured up to 152.2 ng/L." For those who like their numbers in ppm, I believe that's .0447 ppm and .1522 ppm, respectively. Sometimes I fail at math, though.

Serious question: Caffeine is a naturally occurring substance... were they expecting 0g / L?
What is the natural amount of ocean water caffeine; otherwise it is hard to judge the extent of the impact.

Re:Amounts

[phantomfive]

Also, someone should mention, in answer to the question, "how will the presence of caffeine in our oceans affect human health and natural ecosystems?" It won't, caffeine levels at .1522ppm are unlikely to affect the ecosystem in any way, it is such a small concentration. Betteridge's law still stands.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Bear in mind that this is "in waters off Oregon". That does NOT mean that the caffeine level measured there is representative of a uniform distribution throughout the entire ocean volume. While there is diffusion, it's not that fast. What's being seen is localized concentrations of caffeine, and that's a marker for other kinds of pollutants which are associated with it....pesticides, drug residues, etc. It's entirely plausible that you'd see such measurements in estuaries, river mouths and locations near population centers.

Re:Sixty million tons of caffeine

[neyla]

First, you're off by a factor of thousand, so it'd really be sixty thousand tons, not sixty million tons.

Second -- this was the higherst concentration they found, in one small area of the ocean -- they are *not* saying the entire ocean has that much coffeine in it, indeed they sampled other places and found nothing (i.e. the concentration was below their limit of detection)

Re:Amounts

[sFurbo]

They used solid phase extraction, a common technique in analytical chemistry: The water was passed through an adsorbent which trapped caffeine and not water or salt. The sorbent was then washed with dichloromethane to release the caffeine in a much smaller volume, and thus higher concentration. The adsorbent has a limited capacity, so other stuff in sea water could wash out the caffeine. By evaporating, you also concentrate these, so you cannot trap any more caffeine. Besides, the boiling point of caffeine is not that high, so due to the low molecular mass of water, you will lose quite a lot of caffeine by evaporation.