Vanilla, Cinnamon Spice Puget Sound After Thanksgiving

Since there is a spike in detectable vanilla in Puget Sound water right after the holidays, scientists wonder whether the amounts of food flavorings, spices and other substances like caffeine that get flushed (literally) into the Sound are detectable by fish. We bet they are. “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 scarfed down the daily equivalent of about 160,000 butter- or chocolate-chip-type cookies and about 80,000 cookies containing cinnamon during the Thanksgiving weekend.” Of course the more worrisome reality is that antibiotics, contraceptives, perfumes, painkillers, antidepressants also find their way into not just coastal waters, but rivers and streams. Article by the Associated Press.