Monroe County has issued a public health advisory about a deadly substance used in street drugs. The new findings come days after an increase in fatal overdoses.

“This creates a whole new problem,” Chief James VanBrederode of the Gates Police Department, said. “This kind of raises the bar on just how lethal this can be and potentially will spike, I would think.”

The Monroe County Department of Public Health linked a substance called xylazine to the fatal overdoses in the county. The substance is known as a horse tranquilizer, and used during surgeries on large animals.

“This is a side shot with this horse tranquilizer,” Randy Cimino, president of Gates to Recovery, said. “Narcan won’t affect it, so there was no way to save these individuals had they shot up separately. So that’s a problem.”

“When xylazine is mixed with an opiate, the Narcan will reverse the opiate, but it doesn’t touch the xylazine, so the effects of the xylazine are still there,” James Wesley, a clinical and forensic scientist who runs Serturner Safety Consultants LLC, said.

The substance is used as a sedative, muscle relaxer and painkiller for animals only, so the impact of the drug is dangerous to humans — impacting the central nervous system, respiratory system and cardiovascular system.

“The effect is different,” said Wesley. “They’re calling it frozen or stuck, the users are talking about this in NA.”

Law enforcement, community recovery groups and scientists say better testing is needed to detect substances in drugs, and government leaders need to release real-time data about the opioid crisis.

“First of all, we’re very appreciative that somebody got those results out immediately,” said Chief VanBrederode. “We need real-time data. Whenever there’s a pandemic like this where you have multiple fatalities, we need to get those results out as soon as we can to figure out what is going on.”