Silly Season Starts Early

The chemical that was to become Prozac was largely developed in the 1970s.  However, it wasn't until 1987 that it was launched as Prozac - the new miracle cure for depression.

The psychiatric landscape of 1987 was one dominated by highly addictive tranquillisers and highly toxic TCA antidepressants.  Prozac appeared to offer a more effective treatment for depression without the toxicity and addictive properties.  Concern about side effects and withdrawal symptoms were some way into the future.

So positive was the hype around Prozac, that there were (admittedly not very serious) suggestions in the USA that it be added to the water supply in order to cheer everyone up.  It is probably from this time that the urban myth that Prozac has found its way into drinking water first emerged.

If you were on the conspiracy theory wing of the anti-psychiatry movement or the environmentalist movement, you sort of wanted it to be true.  The idea that an unaccountable state might be mass medicating society in some form of social control experiment serves to confirm your paranoia.  The idea that an uncaring state would be prepared to dump vast quantities of psychoactive drugs into the water, without concern about the effects on ecosystems just goes to show that you can't trust them.

The trouble with conspiracy theorists is that they never let the facts get in the way of a good story.  Nor should we assume that all conspiracy theorists are uninfluential cranks.  In August 2004, then Lib Dem Environment Spokesman issued a report claiming that Prozac had been found in drinking water, and that the UK population was being subjected to "hidden mass medication of the unsuspecting public".  Within hours, the story was being reported uncritically by media outlets around the world.

Norman Baker had (as politicians are wont to do) spun the story.  The Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate were misrepresented so that the absence of testing for antidepressants (because they are biodegradable) was portrayed as dangerous complacency.  Indeed, the Scotsman accused the MP of pulling the story out of his arse!

Sadly, as is the way with this kind of story, the rebuttals came too late to make an impact.  The UK Drinking Water Inspectorate put out a press release pointing out that:

• Their tests are carried out on raw sewage, not drinking water
• They do not test for Prozac because it is biodegradable, but they do test for Oestrogens, as these are significantly less degradable
• Research across the EU has found tiny (less than 1 part per 1,000,000 x 1,000,000) amounts of pharmaceutical residues (not Prozac) downstream from sewage treatment plants, but at these concentrations there is no need for concern

"There is no research that shows Prozac is in water. There's no analytical data at all," says Tony Lloyd, who runs the water research programme at the Drinking Water Inspectorate. The drug's chances of remaining intact through someone's body, the sewers and then the water treatment system, which is designed to break down persistent pesticides, are negligible, he says. "Prozac is a biodegradable molecule, and while you would expect people to be excreting it and you'd expect it to be in the sewers, you wouldn't expect it to get through sewage treatment."

But the damage was done.  Whereas the "Prozac in drinking water" headline had been splashed across the front pages of the tabloids, more sober appraisals of the story were left to science journals and science pages.

So pervaussive is the urban myth that it resurfaces every couple of years, and has been repeated so many times that it is simply taken as truth.

So it is that we come to the latest manifestation of the story: Britain's marine life is getting hooked on Prozac.  Once again, this variant of the story was repeated uncritically by mass media.  Even the BBC's apparently respectable Radio 4 Today programme broadcast the story as if it were gospel truth.

The story behind the story is that a team of researchers at Portsmouth University had been giving doses of a range of chemicals (including Prozac) to laboratory shrimps in order to see what effects these would have.  At no time did the research involve testing levels of Prozac downstream of water treatment plants, nor did it involve any study of the actual behaviour of actual shrimps in the seas around water treatment plants.  What the research found was that Prozac (a strong psychoactive drug) changes the behaviour of shrimps in a manner that would put them at greater risk of predation - they swim toward daylight where ordinarily they would swim away from it.

But remember that Drinking Water Inspectorate press release.  There is no significant level of Prozac in treated sewage - certainly none in the drinking water.  The pharmaceutical industry has much to answer for.  However, destroying the marine environment is not one of them.