Hormone-mimickers widespread in Great Lakes region wastewate
Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 11:22 amHormone-mimickers widespread in Great Lakes region wastewater, waterways and fish.
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Great Lakes waterways are contaminated with known endocrine disrupting compounds; scientists warn fish are at risk
March 23, 2015
By Brian Bienkowski Environmental Health News
Larry Barber spent ten years testing water and fish in the Great Lakes region. But he wasn’t looking for the pollutants everyone’s heard of.
Mercury … PCBs … these are still problems. But there’s a lesser-known class of contaminants, which have insidious and concerning health impacts on aquatic creatures.
Barber, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, was looking for, and found, hormone-disrupting compounds – called alkylphenols - making it through wastewater treatment plants and contaminating rivers and fish in the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi River regions. [ http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewco ... ontext=sss ]
The compounds pervade the Great Lakes basin waterways that receive wastewater treatment plant effluent.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a large urban wastewater plant, a mid-size city wastewater plant or individual septic tanks,” Barber said. “These chemicals are present.”
Wastewater treatment plants were not originally designed to handle these compounds, widely used both commercially and residentially in products such as detergents, cleaning products and adhesives. Operators are scrambling to keep up with the hormone-mimickers gushing into their plants.
"It doesn't matter if it's a large urban wastewater plant, a mid-size city wastewater plant or individual septic tanks. These chemicals are present."-Larry Barber, USGSMeanwhile, scientists fear the biologically active contaminants and their metabolites may alter the hormones of fish and other aquatic creatures, leading to reproductive, behavioral and developmental problems.
“In terms of effects, these alkylphenols are just one subset of compounds that add up to produce adverse effects,” said Alan Vajda, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Colorado. “A little alkylphenol, a little estrogenic birth control … they all add up.”
Nearly ubiquitous
From 1999 to 2009 Barber and colleagues looked for nine compounds and their metabolites, many of which are known to disrupt the endocrine system, in the effluent from wastewater treatment plants in Duluth and St. Paul, Minnesota, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis and Akron, Ohio. They found all nine compounds in every plant's effluent.
Over the study timeframe the amount discharged was fairly constant, Barber said.
This isn’t the first time researchers have found the compounds in the Great Lakes. In 2007 Environment Canada reported that the compounds were in sediment of a Great Lakes coastal wetland in Ontario and were accumulating in the tissue of local invertebrates. [ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 6/abstract ]
Another Canadian study from 2009 tested 28 sites in lakes Erie, Huron and Ontario, and found alkylphenols distributed widely in sediments in the lower Great Lakes, with concentrations higher in sediments near larger cities. [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25727675 ]
Alkyphenols are “nearly ubiquitous,” Vajda said. “There are so many sources of these compounds in consumer products and in industrial uses and agriculture.”
It’s not always the parent compound that researchers are looking for. The compounds are partially broken down when they go through wastewater treatment plants.
However, they break down into metabolites that persist and still exhibit endocrine disrupting properties.
“They go down the drain, through the sewers, through the wastewater treatment plant, back into stream, and many are converted into more biologically active forms than what they started as,” Barber said.
Estrogenic impacts to fish
Alkyphenols disrupt endocrine systems, acting estrogenic in fish, birds and mammals.
[ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8013351 ]
MORE:
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[ http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ ... ument_view ]
Great Lakes waterways are contaminated with known endocrine disrupting compounds; scientists warn fish are at risk
March 23, 2015
By Brian Bienkowski Environmental Health News
Larry Barber spent ten years testing water and fish in the Great Lakes region. But he wasn’t looking for the pollutants everyone’s heard of.
Mercury … PCBs … these are still problems. But there’s a lesser-known class of contaminants, which have insidious and concerning health impacts on aquatic creatures.
Barber, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, was looking for, and found, hormone-disrupting compounds – called alkylphenols - making it through wastewater treatment plants and contaminating rivers and fish in the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi River regions. [ http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewco ... ontext=sss ]
The compounds pervade the Great Lakes basin waterways that receive wastewater treatment plant effluent.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a large urban wastewater plant, a mid-size city wastewater plant or individual septic tanks,” Barber said. “These chemicals are present.”
Wastewater treatment plants were not originally designed to handle these compounds, widely used both commercially and residentially in products such as detergents, cleaning products and adhesives. Operators are scrambling to keep up with the hormone-mimickers gushing into their plants.
"It doesn't matter if it's a large urban wastewater plant, a mid-size city wastewater plant or individual septic tanks. These chemicals are present."-Larry Barber, USGSMeanwhile, scientists fear the biologically active contaminants and their metabolites may alter the hormones of fish and other aquatic creatures, leading to reproductive, behavioral and developmental problems.
“In terms of effects, these alkylphenols are just one subset of compounds that add up to produce adverse effects,” said Alan Vajda, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Colorado. “A little alkylphenol, a little estrogenic birth control … they all add up.”
Nearly ubiquitous
From 1999 to 2009 Barber and colleagues looked for nine compounds and their metabolites, many of which are known to disrupt the endocrine system, in the effluent from wastewater treatment plants in Duluth and St. Paul, Minnesota, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis and Akron, Ohio. They found all nine compounds in every plant's effluent.
Over the study timeframe the amount discharged was fairly constant, Barber said.
This isn’t the first time researchers have found the compounds in the Great Lakes. In 2007 Environment Canada reported that the compounds were in sediment of a Great Lakes coastal wetland in Ontario and were accumulating in the tissue of local invertebrates. [ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 6/abstract ]
Another Canadian study from 2009 tested 28 sites in lakes Erie, Huron and Ontario, and found alkylphenols distributed widely in sediments in the lower Great Lakes, with concentrations higher in sediments near larger cities. [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25727675 ]
Alkyphenols are “nearly ubiquitous,” Vajda said. “There are so many sources of these compounds in consumer products and in industrial uses and agriculture.”
It’s not always the parent compound that researchers are looking for. The compounds are partially broken down when they go through wastewater treatment plants.
However, they break down into metabolites that persist and still exhibit endocrine disrupting properties.
“They go down the drain, through the sewers, through the wastewater treatment plant, back into stream, and many are converted into more biologically active forms than what they started as,” Barber said.
Estrogenic impacts to fish
Alkyphenols disrupt endocrine systems, acting estrogenic in fish, birds and mammals.
[ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8013351 ]
MORE:
[ http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ ... ument_view
]