[mirimir]

> In the area around Puget Sound, the University of Washington team found, the spicy residues that remain in wastewater end up flowing into the sound's inland waterways.

> Of all the flavors trickling downstream, artificial vanilla dominates the sound, Keil said. For instance, the team found an average of about six milligrams of artificial vanilla per liter of water sampled.

> The region's sewage runoff contains more than 14 milligrams of vanilla per liter. This would be like spiking an Olympic-size swimming pool with approximately ten 4-ounce (113.4-gram) bottles of artificial vanilla.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170225090427/http://news.natio...

[refurb]

I'm not sure I'd assume that all of that vanillin would come from human sources.

The decomposition of wood creates vanillin, which I assume makes up most of what these folks found.

[mirimir]

Huh.

I see that some artificial vanillin is made from lignin, but I don't know whether natural wood decomposition creates vanillin. Do you have a reference for that?

[s_y_n_t_a_x]

lignin is wood (or rather it's a polymer in the cell walls of wood/plants)

[mirimir]

For sure. But the question is whether vanillin is produced during wood decay.

[s_y_n_t_a_x]

It does

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S134035400...

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjfs1953/37/7/37_7_298/...

> vanillin was also detectèd as a product of wood degradation by some other wood destroying fungi.

[refurb]

Good find.

The levels of vanillin in waterways (14mg per liter) are ridiculously high for human urine to be the sole source.

[soperj]

It literally says how much is contained in the sewage run off. You don't even have to click the link.