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Caffeine And Puget Sound Purity

© Katherine Austinson

Hope you're not eating right now. This isn't a subject for the lunchroom or the dinner table, but it is very intriguing. It's all about waste water in "Starbuck country". Seattle scientists have thought of measuring water pollution by monitoring caffeine levels in Puget Sound. Really, I'm not kidding. They wandered upon the idea some four years ago.

According to an ABC press release, caffeine is a substance that animals don't use. So, measuring caffeine levels in waste water made sense. In a quote from the news story, "we had eight monitoring stations set up in Puget Sound," said Scott Mickelson, King County water quality planner. "We were very surprised to find caffeine everywhere, from Admiralty Inlet to Vashon Island." What's more, not all caffeine comes from human waste. An unknown amount reaches the sound through storm drains from coffee dumped by motorists and espresso cart operators. As a result, further use of caffeine to study Puget Sound and Lake Washington has been abandoned in favor of dye tests, Mickelson said."

Apparently, Puget Sound is proving to be very clean and free of most pollutants. For those of you worried about the effect of this caffeine on wildlife, the news story states that the amounts are so diluted that the caffeine should be harmless to animals.

That's good because we would hate to think that our coffee obsession could in any way be responsible for over-stimulating animals. Wildlife could take on a whole new meaning!

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