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New Pharmaceutical Publication
We’re thrilled to share a new peer-reviewed publication summarizing our research on the fate of pharmaceuticals in urine fertilizer! This research project was a 6-year collaboration between Rich Earth Institute, University of Michigan, and the University at Buffalo. The study compares pharmaceutical uptake in lettuce fertilized with urine to irrigated with reclaimed water. To represent a worst-case scenario, the urine fertilizer was spiked with pharmaceuticals at two levels—one matching the highest concentrations found in the literature, and another ten times higher than that. The study found that if you ate urine-fertilized vegetables every day for 2,800 years, your cumulative exposure would amount to just one single therapeutic dose of the pharmaceuticals studied. Read an overview of our thinking about this topic, or delve into the full research article: Comparative Exposure Assessment of Crops Grown by Urine-Derived Fertilizer and Crops Irrigated with Reclaimed Water.
A huge thank you to all the many volunteers, interns, and staff over the years whose hard work and dedication made this research possible!
