Big Farma: Medication chemicals found in leaves of widely grown crops
16.03.2026,dpa
Photo: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa
Carrots, lettuce and tomatoes are part of many a five-a-day eating regimen, be that for the beta-carotene essential for maintaining good vision or the Vitamin C that helps ward off colds.
As it turns out, the commonly eaten trio have an unheralded property: Their leaves soak up chemicals used to treat conditions such as depression and seizures.
A team of scientists at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in the US found that when the vegetables are irrigated with treated wastewater - an increasingly common practice when farming where freshwater is scarce - they retain multi-use chemicals such as carbamazepine, lamotrigine, amitriptyline and fluoxetine.
These compounds, often used to treat depression, bipolar disorder and seizures, are also found in wastewater used in irrigation.
The researchers found that tomato leaves “contained a concentration of pharmaceuticals more than 200 times higher than that of their fruits,” while for carrots, the difference was sevenfold.
Is this bad for consumer health? The jury remains out on the exact impact of this finding, and the researchers say the concentrations found are not a "cause for alarm."
"Just because these medications are commonly found in treated wastewater doesn't mean they'll have any meaningful impact on the plant or plant consumer," said co-author Carsten Prasse.
The research was published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology as part of what JHU described as “an effort to explore the safety of using municipal wastewater, most commonly after being filtered through treatment facilities, to irrigate crops.”
"To continue to use wastewater safely, we need a more sophisticated understanding of where and how crop species metabolize, or break down, agents in the water," said Daniella Sanchez of JHU.
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