NOVEMBER 2005
Pharmaceuticals passing into waterways
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 09:33:03 +0930
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.pharmaceutical16oct16,0
,5116758.story?coll=bal-newsaol-headlines
"The water industry has no problem spending the public's money to put in new [filter] technology," Snyder said. "But the cost might mean that fewer schools can be built or fewer hospitals." No suggestion, of course, about fewer wars,
missions to Mars or space stations ...OR eliminating the billions of dollars of public funds handed over to obscenely overpaid 'executive' employees and wealthy shareholders of huge national and trans-national corporations each and every
year .... CORPORATE WELFARE! -- john
Drug traces found in water pose problem for wildlife
Pharmaceuticals passing unaltered from humans into nation's waterways
by Tom Pelton (Baltimore Sun; October 16, 2005)
Over the last two years, scientists working on the Potomac River have netted 111 smallmouth bass with bizarre sexual traits. The fish were males but had eggs growing inside their testes. Researchers found many of these gender-bending bass
downstream from sewage treatment plants in water tinged with a chemical called
ethinylestradiol - the active ingredient in birth control pills.
More studies are necessary, biologists say, but evidence is mounting that trace
levels of prescription drugs in rivers and streams may be harming fish,
tadpoles, frogs, mussels and oysters. The pharmaceuticals are passing unaltered
through people's bodies and sewage plants into waterways.
In Georgia and Mississippi, scientists recently discovered that the
antidepressant Prozac, in water downstream from sewage plants, can kill
tadpoles, stunt the growth of others and befuddle the survivors so they swim in
circles and can't flee from predators.
In Pennsylvania, a biologist reported that small amounts of Prozac may cause
mussels and clams to discharge their sperm and eggs prematurely, dooming their
offspring. And in Texas, a researcher found that the sexual organs of male
minnows shrank when they were lowered into a river tainted with birth control
drugs.
"We might just be seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of the cumulative
impact of all this," said Dr. Thomas Burke, associate chairman of health policy
at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Pollution concerns He said
concerns about pharmaceutical pollution are likely to become more urgent as a
growing human population consumes a multiplying number of medications.
"This is an important area we have to study more," Burke said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working with other federal offices
to investigate whether the government should require better sewage filtration
systems to remove drugs before water is discharged, according to the agency.
Pharmaceuticals are not regulated as pollutants, and most sewage plants are not
designed to break them all down.
One stumbling block to adding better filtration systems is the cost, which could
reach $100 million to install advanced technology on each large sewage treatment
plant, said Shane Snyder, research manager at the Southern Nevada Water
Authority.
"The water industry has no problem spending the public's money to put in new
[filter] technology," Snyder said. "But the cost might mean that fewer schools
can be built or fewer hospitals."
Vicki Blazer, a fish pathologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, began
investigating smallmouth bass in the Potomac River a few years ago when
fishermen reported that their catch was falling. She worked with natural
resources officials in Maryland and West Virginia, who used devices that fired
electric shocks into the Potomac River to stun hundreds of fish in 2003 and
2004.
Blazer said she dissected 184 male bass, and found that 111 of them -- or about
60 percent -- had eggs growing inside their sexual organs. All nine male bass
netted downstream from the Hagerstown sewage plant had this sexual abnormality.
Fish like these almost never show up in clean rivers, she said.
Blazer is looking into the possibility that the birth control drugs caused the
sexual confusion. She also found several other pollutants in the river,
including triclosan, a disinfectant used in soap, and trifluralin, a farm
pesticide. Any of these chemicals could be disrupting fish hormonal systems, she
said.
In an effort to pin down which is causing the mutations, Blazer's colleagues
have shocked an additional 100 fish during the last month at five places along
the lower Potomac River in Maryland, including downstream from the Blue Plains
sewage treatment plant near Washington.
The study is important, Blazer said, because fish with deformed sex organs might
not reproduce as well. People also draw drinking water from the Potomac, and the
same chemicals that could be harming fish populations might also be hurting
humans, she said.
"We use the fish as indicators of ecosystem health, which eventually can
translate into human health," she said. "Other researchers have raised concerns
about declining sperm counts in human males and increases in testicular cancer."
(The purification process used by municipal water systems removes most of these
drugs from drinking water, but not all of them, experts say.)
In the Baltimore area, Lynn Roberts, an environmental chemist at the Johns
Hopkins University, received a $500,000 EPA grant to test for drugs in the water
pouring out of the city's Back River sewage treatment plant, which leads into a
tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.
Working with doctoral students Kevin Bisceglia and Jim Yu, she found 39 of the
52 chemicals they tested for, including the painkillers Diclofenac and Naproxen;
the anti-seizure drug Phenytoin; and Nonylphenol, a compound formed from the
decay of spermicides and other products.
They also found caffeine and evidence of what might have been cocaine flowing
into the river, she said.
"We are trying to predict what may be entering the environment, and we hope to
know what could pose toxic consequences," Roberts said, standing on a pier in
the Back River.
The concentrations are often extremely low, about .1 part per billion, the
equivalent of plopping an aspirin into a tank holding 1.3 million gallons of
water. But other scientists have found that some chemicals can affect the bodies
of animals at even lower levels.
The Prozac factor
Marsha Black, a professor of environmental health at the University of Georgia,
found that minuscule levels of Prozac in rivers - .05 parts per billion - can
slow the growth of tadpoles. The public's use of Prozac has been soaring in
recent years, with 54 million people taking the drug today, a rise of more than
50 percent in the last four years, researchers said. A study by the U.S.
Geological Survey in 2002 found Prozac in 28 of 44 streambeds tested nationally.
Black said she was inspired by this study to find whether frogs and tadpoles
were being drugged. Amphibian populations have been plummeting over the last
quarter century, with at least 34 species vanishing since 1980 and nearly a
third of the 5,743 known varieties threatened with extinction, according to the
National Wildlife Federation.
Black took fertilized frog eggs and dropped them in 75 plastic tanks in her lab.
Then she added water, with half of the tanks infused with the same
concentrations of Prozac's active ingredient, fluoxetine, found by a colleague
in a river in Mississippi.
She watched the tadpoles grow over 166 days and found that 40 percent of those
raised with the drug died, compared with 16 percent of the tadpoles without the
medication, said Emily Rogers, a doctoral student who helped with the research.
The drugged tadpoles seemed dazed and confused, and grew to be about 40 percent
smaller than those in clean water. "We had some funny swimmers," Black said,
"some fellas who could not keep their orientation in the water and would swim
around in circle."
In a different experiment, Bryan Brooks, a biologist at Baylor University,
placed several dozen fathead minnows into cages and lowered them into Pecan
Creek in Denton, Texas, down from a waste plant. The water tested positive for
low levels of birth control medications, Brooks said. After three months, Brooks
said he noticed that the sexual organs of the male minnows shrank, the
distinctive fat pads behind their heads melted away, and the strong vertical
gray lines painting their sides vanished, making them look like females.
At Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, biologist Peter Fong added low levels of
Prozac to tanks of water holding clams and mussels. He said he discovered that
the antidepressant spurred a premature discharge of sperm and eggs. Shellfish in
the wild would doom their offspring if they spawned like this in the wrong
season, Fong said.
"It's not a red flag yet for the environment," Fong said. "It's a pink flag -
something worth watching carefully."
#### tom.pelton@baltsun.com Copyright (c) 2005, The Baltimore Sun