UNDER THE RADAR – MICHAEL WATTS

Scampi & Coke?

You never know what is around the next corner. While carrying out a survey of what they call micropollutants in freshwater shrimps in Suffolk, scientists from King’s College London turned up not only traces of the pesticides and agrochemicals they had anticipated finding in this rural area but also residues of cocaine.

For the uninitiated, among whom I have to include myself, my favourite internet search engine tells me that micropollutants are “organic or mineral substances whose toxic, persistent and bioaccumulative properties may have a negative effect on the environment and/or organisms”.

Finding traces of a Class A drug in creepy-crawlies in East Anglia was not just some sort of chance one-off occurrence caused by some county-line dealer dumping his gear in a ditch in an attempt to escape the posse, or some high-flying reveller answering the call of nature behind a hedge. The research team found traces of nose candy in all the samples they had collected at a total of fifteen separate locations, as well as Ketamine and legitimate pharmaceuticals.

Flippant mental images of totally stoned crustaceans with rolled-up banknotes shoved over their gills partying on down, having scored some snow from the crayfish at the next bend upriver are well out of order here. The issue is no laughing matter. Given that all the samples collected in a wide range of locations tested positive, you have to think that the groundwater is contaminated over a not inconsiderable area.

I am no research scientist but, bearing in mind that the major route of excretion of cocaine in man is in the urine, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the ground water may be contaminated with sewage. This is not exactly a happy thought, when you remember that the water we are talking about here is the aquifers from which our drinking water may be extracted.

Of course the King’s College survey that was reported in “Environment International” was only a limited one carried out in a small area of the country. More extensive sampling programs covering wider areas would be necessary before any more broad conclusions could be drawn.

It bears repeating too that we are talking about micropollutants here, that is to say residues present at levels that are detectable not levels that are likely to have any great effect on most of those who ingest them, although one can never be entirely sure what might be the long term effects on the body of prolonged exposure to almost anything In the short term, those citizens of Suffolk who are looking for a good night out will probably need to look a little further than the parish pump.

This newspaper being “The Greyhound Star” rather than “The Crab Constellation”, what is the relevance of residues of illegal substances in pond life got to do with our sport, I hear somebody ask.

The big question for our industry goes something like this: if the boffins at King’s College can detect residues of what the G.B.G.B. would term prohibited substances in the ground water in rural England, might it also be possible at least sometimes to detect residues of same in the urine of greyhounds drinking such water?

Two years ago we saw one of Ireland’s fastest trackers test positive for cocaine residues on no less than three different occasions. Not wishing to find myself being sued, I am not about to comment on specific cases old or new, but you have to wonder if more such cases await over the horizon as the analysis of urine samples becomes ever more sophisticated.

If a guy cannot give a race dog a drink of the tap water he drinks himself without risking a positive drug test what is he to do? The current regulatory structure of greyhound racing is built on a zero tolerance of drug use. That of course remains the Holy Grail, but that particular vessel is reputedly only to be seen by a very few.

Maybe, just maybe, the zeitgeist being what it is, a day is coming when pragmatically the Rules may have to be relaxed so that only dogs testing above a carefully defined threshold level will be subject to sanction. Maybe that is only a pipedream.

For now it remains no more than food for thought.

Prawn cocktail anyone?