Drugs in water hurt fish and wildlife

[mvm...@yahoo.com]

Hi all,

I found this article on Yahoo news today. A long story, but worth the
read for anyone on on this google group.

-Mike



Drugs in water hurt fish and wildlife

By JEFF DONN, MARTHA MENDOZA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD, Associated Press
Writers

LAKE MEAD, Nev. - On this brisk, glittering morning, a flat-bottomed
boat glides across the massive reservoir that provides Las Vegas its
drinking water. An ominous rumble growls beneath the craft as its two
long, electrified claws extend into the depths.

Moments later, dozens of stunned fish float to the surface.

Federal scientists scoop them up and transfer them into 50-quart
Coleman ice chests for transport to a makeshift lab on the dusty
lakeshore. Within the hour, the researchers will club the seven-pound
common carps to death, draw their blood, snip out their gonads and
pack them in aluminum foil and dry ice.

The specimens will be flown across the country to laboratories where
aquatic toxicologists are studying what happens to fish that live in
water contaminated with at least 13 different medications -- from over-
the-counter pain killers to prescription antibiotics and mood
stabilizers.

More often than not these days, the laboratory tests bring unwelcome
results.

A five-month Associated Press investigation has determined that trace
amounts of many of the pharmaceuticals we take to stay healthy are
seeping into drinking water supplies, and a growing body of research
indicates that this could harm humans.

But people aren't the only ones who consume that water. There is more
and more evidence that some animals that live in or drink from streams
and lakes are seriously affected.

Pharmaceuticals in the water are being blamed for severe reproductive
problems in many types of fish: The endangered razorback sucker and
male fathead minnow have been found with lower sperm counts and
damaged sperm; some walleyes and male carp have become what are called
feminized fish, producing egg yolk proteins typically made only by
females.

Meanwhile, female fish have developed male genital organs. Also, there
are skewed sex ratios in some aquatic populations, and sexually
abnormal bass that produce cells for both sperm and eggs.

There are problems with other wildlife as well: kidney failure in
vultures, impaired reproduction in mussels, inhibited growth in algae.

"We have no reason to think that this is a unique situation," says
Erik Orsak, an environmental contaminants specialist with the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, pulling off rubber gloves splattered with
fish blood at Lake Mead. "We find pretty much anywhere we look, these
compounds are ubiquitous."

For example:

_In a broad study still under way, fish collected in waterways near or
in Chicago; West Chester, Pa.; Orlando; Dallas; and Phoenix have
tested positive for an array of pharmaceuticals -- analgesics,
antibiotics, antidepressants, antihistamines, anti-hypertension drugs
and anti-seizure medications.

_That research follows a 2003 study in northern Texas, where every
bluegill, black crappie and channel catfish researchers caught living
downstream of a wastewater treatment plant tested positive for the
active ingredients in two widely used antidepressants -- one of the
first times the residues of such drugs were detected in wildlife.

_In several recent studies of soil fertilized with livestock manure or
with the sludge product from wastewater treatment plants, American
scientists found earthworms had accumulated those same compounds,
while vegetables -- including corn, lettuce and potatoes -- had absorbed
antibiotics. "These results raise potential human health concerns,"
wrote researchers.

_Blood and liver samples of bull sharks in Florida's Caloosahatchee
River, a nursery area for juvenile bullsharks and home to six
wastewater treatment plants, are being tested for the presence of an
array of medications this winter. Of the first ten sharks sampled,
nine tested positive for the active ingredient in an antidepressant.

_And in Colorado's Boulder Creek, 50 of the 60 white suckers collected
downstream of Boulder's wastewater treatment plant were female,
compared to about half of them upstream.

Elsewhere in the world -- from the icy streams of England to the wild
game reserves of South Africa -- snails, fish, even antelope, are
showing signs of possible pharmaceutical contamination. For example,
fish and prawn in China exposed to treated wastewater had shortened
life spans, Pacific oysters off the coast of Singapore had inhibited
growth, and in Norway, Atlantic salmon exposed to levels of estrogen
similar to those found in the North Sea had severe reproductive
problems.

More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in surface
waters throughout the world.

"It's inescapable," said Sudeep Chandra, an assistant professor at
University of Nevada, Reno who studies inland waters and aquatic life.
"There's enough global information now to confirm these contaminants
are affecting organisms and wildlife."

While some researchers have captured wildlife and tested it for
pharmaceuticals, many more have brought wildlife into their
laboratories and exposed them to traces of human pharmaceuticals at
levels similar to those found in water, aquatic plants and animals.

The results have been troubling.

Freshwater mussels exposed to tiny amounts of an antidepressant's
active ingredient released premature larvae, giving the next
generation lower odds of survival; in a separate lab study, the
antidepressant also stunted reproduction in tiny fresh water mud
snails.

When researchers slid hydras -- a tiny polyp that under a microscope
looks like a slender jellyfish -- into water tainted with minute
amounts of pharmaceuticals, their mouths, feet and tentacles stopped
growing. While the hydras are minuscule, the implications are grave:
Chronic exposure to trace levels of commonly found pharmaceuticals can
damage a species at the foundation of a food pyramid.

Tiny zooplankton, another sentinel species, died off in the lab when
they were exposed to extremely small amounts of a common drug used to
treat humans suffering from internal worms and other digesting
parasites.

In a landmark, seven-year study published last year, researchers
turned an entire pristine Canadian lake into their laboratory,
deliberately dripping the active ingredient in birth control pills
into the water in amounts similar to those found to have contaminated
aquatic life, plants and water in nature.

After just seven weeks, male fathead minnows began producing yolk
proteins, their gonads shrank, and their behavior was feminized -- they
fought less, floating passively. They also stopped reproducing,
resulting in "ultimately, a near extinction of this species from the
lake," said the scientists.

While the Canadian study was prompted by human intervention, similar
die-offs have occurred in the wild.

In Pakistan, the entire population of a common vulture virtually
disappeared after the birds began eating carcasses of cows that had
been treated with an anti-inflammatory drug. Scientists, in a 2004
study, said they eventually determined that the birds' kidneys were
failing.

"The death of those vultures -- the fact that you could get a complete
collapse of a population due to pharmaceuticals in the environment --
that was a powerful thing," said Christian Daughton, an EPA researcher
in Las Vegas. "It was a major ecological catastrophe."

In November, at the annual Society of Environmental Toxicology and
Chemistry meeting in Milwaukee, 30 new studies related to
pharmaceuticals in the environment were presented -- hormones found in
the Chicago River; abnormalities in Japanese zebra fish; ibuprofen,
gemfibrozil, triclosan and naproxen in the lower Great Lakes.

Many of those studies refer to the heralded research at Lake Mead.
There, on a recent morning, Steven Goodbred struggled to hold a large
wriggling carp with both hands. On the outside, the carp looked fine,
vibrant and strong, but the U.S. Geological Survey scientist assumed
the worst.

"Typically we see low levels of sex steroids, limited testicular
function, low sperm count, that kind of thing," he said slipping the
fish into a holding tank and closing the lid. "We'll have to wait and
see about this fellow."

These carp live, eat, reproduce and die at the mouth of what amounts
to a 30-mile-long drainage system that starts within the toilets and
sinks of the casinos, hotels and homes of Sin City.

Some 180 million gallons of effluent are discharged into the channel
each day from three wastewater treatment plants. The daily sewage
discharge is expected to increase to 400 million gallons a day by
2050.

The USGS and U.S Fish and Wildlife Service tracked the channel from
its origins, before the inflow from the sewage plants, to where it
empties into Las Vegas Bay in the lake. Their findings: The amount of
endocrine-disrupting compounds (including hormone treatments and other
chemicals affecting reproduction) increased more than 646 times.

Not far from the mouth of the drainage channel -- amid the fishing
boats and sightseeing tours -- water is sucked into a long pipe,
destined for a drinking water treatment plant, then Las Vegas -- thus
beginning the cycle all over again.

Other communities in Nevada, as well as locales in California and
Arizona, also draw on Lake Mead.

"Lake Mead is a fortuitous worst-case scenario" for study, said
environmental toxicologist Greg Moller, holding a bottle of Lake Mead
water he planned to take back to his lab at the University of Idaho.
"You've got the wastewater, you've got the documented impact on
wildlife, and you have drinking water uptake."

Although more than eight million tourists, including 500,000 anglers,
visit the reservoir annually, there are no warnings about the
contaminants. No signs. No advisories.

That's not unusual. Scientists have been finding pharmaceuticals in
hundreds of other public waterways across the nation and throughout
the world -- almost always without public fanfare, as documented in the
AP investigation.

At the same time, scientists are looking for remedies. In Las Vegas,
just off the Strip at the Desert Research Institute, microbial
biologist Duane Moser optimistically held a tray of increasingly murky
test tubes.

"We put a little bit of estrogen in here, and then we added a
particular bacteria, and guess what? The bacteria are consuming the
estrogen," he said. Someday, perhaps, scientists will be able to use
these special bacteria to clean estrogen out of contaminated water.

"It's early, but it's promising," he said.

___

National Writer Martha Mendoza reported from Lake Mead, while writers
Jeff Donn, based in Boston, and Justin Pritchard, based in Los
Angeles, also contributed. The AP National Investigative Team can be
reached at inves...@ap.org