New environmental study finds cocaine, antidepressants, makeup in Colorado's Clear Creek

Clear Creek Is quickly becoming the City of Golden's most popular attraction.

A new study of what's in the creek has found some products and chemicals ranging from unsurprising to troubling.

"We came down here yesterday biking and there was so many people," one tuber said. "We've never seen so many people."

All that packing of tubes in and out of the water every day has prompted questions about what's in the creek beyond just tubes.

"What's the impact of this on the creek? We are seeing this really heavy influx of human use," said Carmen Villarruel, and environmental chemist and PhD candidate at the Colorado School of Mines.

Villarruel and other researchers at the Colorado School of Mines started looking for answers.

On Labor Day in 2022, they took several samples from the water both before and after the crowds.

"We can see what happens after there's been a lot of people recreating in it," she said.

With the help of their counterparts at Johns Hopkins University, they found lots of different chemicals; everything from personal products like sunscreens and makeup to pharmaceuticals like antidepressants and birth control and even cocaine.

They're byproducts of all those people in a small stretch of the mountain stream.

"These are the type of things we expect to see in pools and wastewater treatment plants where you know there's concentrated people in small amounts of water, but we are a little bit surprised to find them in a stream that's supposed to be pristine," Villarruel added.

Metals like lead, copper and zinc were also found, likely in the golden stretch of Clear Creek from Colorado's historic mining towns up the canyon and stirred up by big crowds.

"I'm not here enough to be continually exposed it's not surprising, considering where the water runs from," another tuber told CBS News Colorado.

The good news Villarruel says when the numbers clear out so does the water.

"I think it's important to know that we are impacting the places," Villarruel said, "intentionally and unintentionally, and I think it's just important to understand that impact is."

While the study found the different compounds are present in the water, they can't say how much is there and Villarruel says this research did not look at how it impacts the overall health of the river.