Thousands of jars of British honey may be contaminated with prescription medicines.
Tests on raw honey from hives reveal it contains potent drugs used to treat cancer, fungal infections and depression, as well as ibuprofen.
Scientists suspect the drugs maybe getting into honey through treated sewage sprayed on nearby crops.
When a person takes a tablet, some of it leaves the body as waste and enters the sewage system.
Treated sewage – known as biosolids – is then sprayed on agricultural land as a fertiliser.
It is estimated that British farmers use more than three million tonnes of this sewage a year.
Scientists fear bees are collecting contaminated pollen from treated plants and transporting it back to their hives – where it gets into honey bound for high-street shops.
Researchers from the University of Leeds and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxfordshire took honey samples from 19 hives from a variety of agricultural locations and found more than 100 ‘suspect chemicals’.
Tests on raw honey from hives reveal it contains potent drugs used to treat cancer , fungal infections and depression , as well as ibuprofen
Medicines accounted for almost two-thirds of the contamination.
The samples showed hives are also being tainted by industrial chemicals and plastics present in sewage sludge.
The researchers called for urgent investigations into the potential risks to consumers, as well as any harm to honeybees.
‘These findings warrant further investigation,’ they said in a report published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
‘The potential risk to consumers remains largely unexplored.’
Britain imports around 90 per cent of its honey but has an estimated 250,000 beehives supplying the product to retailers.
Regulations state that all honey must be free of organic or inorganic matter that is ‘foreign to its composition’.
However, there are no routine checks for ‘contaminants of emerging concern’ such as potent medicines or industrial chemicals.
It is not clear whether honey from other countries is contaminated to the same extent.
Campaign groups have called for a ban on the use of sewage sludge in British farming.
Environment charity Fidra said: ‘Many drugs end up in the solid sewage sludge applied to agricultural land.
‘But outdated UK regulations focus only on certain metals, leaving pharmaceutical contamination completely unmonitored.
‘This means our soils have become inadvertent repositories for everything from antibiotics to hormonal medications.’
