Outdoor music festivals — events that are no stranger to illicit substance use and public urination — could be responsible for contaminating local rivers with recreational drugs and messing with the lifecycle of endangered eels, according to research.
Scientists at Bangor University in Wales collected water from the Whitelake River in Somerset following the UK's Glastonbury Festival 2019 and found worrying levels of both MDMA and cocaine. The researchers tested the river upstream and downstream of the festival site in the weeks before, during, and after the festival. Traces of the drugs were found to be significantly highest during the weekend after the festival in the Whitelake site, downstream of the festival.
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