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Londoners are taking so much cocaine aquatic animals more used to being jellied have found themselves inadvertently pickled.

According to new research by King's College London researchers class A drugs consumed in the capital are urinated into its waste water systems at an alarming rate.

Unfortunately for animals living in the Thames, London's water treatment plants are failing to filter out cocaine, with levels of the drug rising in the water when downpours overwhelm waste plants and carry sewage into the estary.

The study, which was conducted from a monitoring station near the House of Parliament, has been read alongside a report published by the University of Naples Federico II last year where European eels were put in water containing a small dose of cocaine.

(Image: Getty Images/imageBROKER RF)

They found the fish “appeared hyperactive” compared to eels kept in cocaine free waters.

While the powder may be increasingly popular with the country's elite - an estimated 3.64% of the highest income bracket in a Home Office study taking the drug in 2017/18, up from 2.2% in 2014/15 - fish are probably not such big fans.

The Naples researchers found the drug accumulated in the brain, muscles, gills, skin and other tissues of the cocaine-exposed eels.

The eels' skeletal muscle showed evidence of serious injury, including breakdown and swelling, which had not healed 10 days after they were removed from the drug-contaminated water.

(Image: Getty Images/Westend61)

There is unlikely to be a midweek respite for the eels.



According to the researchers the amount of cocaine found in the Thames was largely consistent throughout the week.

"Increases in caffeine, cocaine and benzoylecgonine were observed 24 hours after sewer overflow events," said the King's College London researchers.

"Concentrations of cocaine and benzoylecgonine remained high in wastewater across the week with only a minor increase over the weekend, which is not consistent with other cities.

"London is known as one of the highest consumers of cocaine and this suggested everyday usage."

According to report the concentration of cocaine found in the river was so high it "lay outside of the quantifiable range."

(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto) (Image: Getty Images/Aurora)

The King's College study is just a further piece of bad news in what has been a torrid couple of centuries for eels.

While they are an integral part of Cockney culture, today the migratory fish are particularly hard to find in the Thames.

Over the course of the industrial revolution, the river became so polluted it could no longer support the species.

Although they have since returned in smaller numbers, the threat of pollution and a parasite associated with the Japanese eel have seen them classified as critically endangered bybthe International Union for Conservation of Nature.