To use some sort of
stimulating substances to increase the performance seems a wide spread phenomenon reading newspapers:
- …
- Cyclist
- Students
- Researchers (in best case coffee)
Now
reading that even mountaineers (and those who want to be), can be added to the
list. To get up to the higher elevations, beside O2 (most likely enriched 18O compared to surrounding composition),
a quite a long list of stuff is used. In the NZZ article on drugs and
mountaineering a reference was made to a
nice study in plos. The study of Rohbach etal Plos 2016 used a cool
sampling setup to monitor and prove one or several drugs in male
"discharge", suggesting frequent drug use among climbers ascending
Mont Blanc!!! Only a shame the team of Rohbach didn't use a lab in the field for continuous measurements and forgot to analyze the stable
isotope composition of the water.
The
automatic samplers collecting pristine streamwater e.g. Fischer et al. HR 2017
or Fischer et al. JoH 2017 are lucky to be out in a clean and fresh
environment. Unfortunate are the automatic samplers which are used to sample sewerage systems
e.g. Ort et al. EST 2010 to investigate Sampling for Pharmaceuticals
and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) and Illicit Drugs in Wastewater Systems or
the ingenious sampling setup of Rohbach check:
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| Sampling setup of Rohbach et al. Plos 2016 using an automatic sampler. Poor PhD student who has to empty the sampler.
Next time one (man/women) is on the toilet and hears a strange peristaltic pump type noise... most likely some body is investigating your coffee or ... consumption.
Ref:
Fischer, B. M. C., Stähli,
M., Seibert, J., Stahli, M., & Seibert, J. (2017). Pre-event water
contributions to runoff events of different magnitude in pre-alpine headwaters.
Hydrology Research, nh2016176. https://doi.org/10.2166/nh.2016.176
Fischer, B. M. C., van
Meerveld, H. J., & Seibert, J. (2017). Spatial variability in the isotopic
composition of rainfall in a small headwater catchment and its effect on
hydrograph separation. Journal of Hydrology.
Ort, C., Lawrence, M.
G., Reungoat, J., & Mueller, J. F. (2010). Sampling for PPCPs in wastewater
systems: comparison of different sampling modes and optimization strategies. Environ.
Sci. Technol., 44(16), 6289–6296. https://doi.org/10.1021/es100778d
Robach P, Trebes G, Lasne F, Buisson C, Méchin N,
Mazzarino M, et al. (2016) Drug Use on Mont Blanc: A Study Using Automated
Urine Collection. PLoS ONE 11(6): e0156786. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0156786
Alptal samplers:
Automatic water sampler in a pristine pre-alpine headwater catchment-WS07 (Fischer et al. HR2017)
Although pristine waters, in case a colleague is using
uranine as a fluro tracer to measure discharge the samples can get a bit yellow
:S
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