Drugs in fish: Pharmaceuticals found in fish caught near North Side sewage treatment plant in Chicago area

By Michael Hawthorne | Tribune reporter
March 26, 2009

By Michael Hawthorne

Tribune reporter

Prescription drugs used to treat depression, high blood pressure, seizures and other ailments are turning up in fish caught downstream from a Chicago sewage treatment plant, according to a new study that highlights some unintended consequences of our medicated lives.

Little is known about the potential effects on people and wildlife, but scientists and regulators increasingly are concerned about long-term exposure to drugs in the water, even at very low levels.

Related links

*
Where to drop off unused medications in Chicago
*
Drugs in fish Drugs in fish Photo
*
City finds drug traces in tap water
*
What's in your water?
*
Tainted seafood

The mercury menace

In the largest project of its kind, researchers from Baylor University found trace amounts of seven different pharmaceutical drugs in fish caught near the North Side Treatment Plant at Howard Street and McCormick Boulevard. They recorded similar results near sewage plants in Dallas, Orlando, suburban Philadelphia and Phoenix.

The findings echo earlier testing by the Tribune and scientific researchers that found small amounts of pharmaceuticals in the drinking water of Chicago and dozens of other cities. Federal environmental regulators have ordered a sweeping expansion of their own assessments of pollution contaminating the nation's rivers.

There are a lot of unanswered questions out there, Kevin Chambliss, one of the Baylor researchers, said Wednesday. "We just don't know what it means yet ecologically, but this shows there's a need to know more."

Pharmaceuticals end up in drinking water and in fish when people take medications and residue passes through their bodies into the sewers. Conventional sewage and drinking water treatment filters out some substances, or at least reduces the concentrations, but multiple studies have found that small amounts get through.

Earlier studies by Chambliss and others found that medicines are absorbed by fish and accumulate in livers and other tissue. The new peer-reviewed study, published online Wednesday by the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, is the first to report such findings across a broad swath of the nation.

Among the medicines that the researchers discovered in fish are norfluoxetine, an anti-depressant; diltiazem, a medicine prescribed to control high blood pressure, and carbamazepine, an anti-seizure drug. They also found medication used to control high cholesterol and allergies, along with an anti-bacterial chemical and two fragrances found in soaps.

Treated sewage from the Chicago area is pumped into the Chicago River, which was reversed during the last century to flow away from Lake Michigan, the source of most of the region's drinking water. The river isn't a major draw for anglers, but recreational fishing is not uncommon.

Testing by the Tribune last year turned up small amounts of pharmaceuticals in the region's treated drinking water, a sign that drug residue is commonly found in the lake, too.

As more studies have found pharmaceuticals in drinking water and in wildlife, regulators are reversing their long-held advice that people should flush unused or out-of-date drugs down the toilet.

Chicago collects unwanted pharmaceuticals at the headquarters for each of the city's five police districts; unused or expired drugs also can be dropped off at the city's Household Chemicals and Computer Recycling Center, 1150 N. North Branch St., and during weekend collections held elsewhere in the state.

But while programs to collect unwanted medication can be helpful, most of the drug residue seeping into the environment comes through our bodies, posing a new and potentially costly challenge for treatment plant operators.

Officials at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District have begun monitoring for pharmaceuticals and other unregulated chemicals that elude conventional sewage treatment methods.

"It's something that's very difficult to control," said Richard Lanyon, the district's general superintendent. "And it's a question for society to determine whether it is worth spending the money to control it."

mhawthorne@tribune.com


Distributed without profit to ESA Great Lakes District members for educational purposes

Yes the drugs that Canadians and Americans flush or urinate down the toilet end up in our water. Fish are the canary in the coal mine. The story is bigger than just pharmaceuticals found in fish.

If you get injected with a radioactive dye or drink a radioactive beverage before an imagining test later on your body evacuates it into the water via the water closet throne.


It is crazy in Buffalo, New York and in the Great Lakes that no proper place can be found for the ordinary citizen to drop off expired and unused drugs.

U.S. stimulus money would be well spent to upgrade our water and sewage systems across North America. At this time the current sewage systems are allowing pharmaceuticals and lower trace radioactivity to be released into our water.

The little guys mutate and sooner or later the big humans start to mutate.

A deformed frog in a pond is like a canary in a coal mine.


What's going into frogs is going into us.

I say this PBS special tonight and can say that it was well worth the time I invested in the show.


http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/frogs-the-thin-green-line/introduction/4763/