Effects On Wildlife

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.

Roger C. Helm, Ph.D.
USFWS -Chief, Division Environmental Quality
4401 N. Fairfax Dr. Rm. 820
Arlington, VA 22203
703-358-2148 FAX: -1800
roger_helm@fws.gov