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New pollutants harming fish; are they a threat to humans, too? Date published: 11/12/2009
By RUSTY DENNEN New pollutants brewing in the Potomac River basin are creating fish with both male and female characteristics, and may be playing a role in fish kills. As a result, more regulation of new chemicals is needed, along with study of the potential effects of "endocrine disrupters" on humans who are drinking the water. Those are a few of the findings the Potomac Conservancy's State of the Nation's River report, released yesterday in a conference call with reporters. The report, in its third year, focuses on the troubling discovery of intersex fish--mostly smallmouth bass--in the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers in Virginia and the Monocacy River in Maryland. Vicki Blazer, a fish pathologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, was among scientists looking into fish kills in 2002 when male fish with eggs and female fish with reduced reproductive function turned up in the research. "Since that finding, we've worked with West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland to address fish kills and intersex fish. More and more, as we look at it, both are associated." She said that intersex fish also tend to have diminished immune systems, but she said that's not the whole picture. "It is just one of the indicators, and the one that has attracted a lot of public attention. I don't believe we're going to find just one chemical or one source. What we're seeing is complex mixtures," Blazer said. The contaminants enter waterways in the form of pesticides and fertilizers, industrial byproducts, agricultural and veterinary products, pharmaceuticals, per- sonal-care products and biosolids. John Peterson Myers, chief scientist with Environmental Health Services in Charlottesville and co-author of a book on the subject, "Our Stolen Future," said the problem extends beyond fish and aquatic life. "To put it in a broader context, first, it is clear that the patterns of contamination are important for wildlife," he said. Research is showing how "contamination, even at remarkably low levels, affect wildlife and is likely to be affecting people." That's significant because 90 percent of those living in the Washington area get their drinking water from the Potomac. Plants that treat wastewater and filter drinking water are currently not removing many of the contaminants from water intakes or discharges into the river, the conservancy says.
Date published: 11/12/2009
All that pollution works it's way into the food chain, and since males contribute their genes in great quantities to the polllution being discussed...follow me so far?
Ok no. Well, those male genes in addition to the other male genes that wiggle their way into the female systems contribute to a greater level of aggression than were seen in previous generations.
I deserve a pulitzer prize for this discovery and hope fervently that the boys in Stockholm are reading these threads.
along the watershed? Seems to me someone thinks development has an impact.
The development and storm water runoff have obvious impacts. You call it biased, I call it common sense.
I am floored at the jump to conclusions approach in the
article and posts. Blaming McMansions? Obvious bias.
Increase stormwater management regulations? Obvious
bias. The article is clear that the cause is unknown.
Regulation should be based on science. Not personal bias
and the desire to regulate things you don't like. Don't hurt
individual's finances throwing money at a biased solution.
Lets see the cause and solve the problem. Don't use it as
an opportunity to blame what you personally dislike.
we should know. It will take a lot of changes and a lot of
money to make these changes and we need to be as cost-
efficient as possible because there is not going to be
enough money to clean it all up.
We have to know more about what the concentrations are
in the river - of the different substances.
fertilizer on a septic field is not the same as fertilizer on a
small lot next to an asphalt parking lot so that when it rains
the fertilizer does not go into the soil but instead into the
runoff.
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