Pharmaceuticals in Our Water Supply Are Causing Bizarre Mutations to Wildlife

From inter-sex fish in the Potomac River to frog mutations in Wisconsin, federal officials are spending this summer studying the effects of pharmaceuticals such as pain killers and depression medicine on the environment, because the drugs have turned up in America's drinking water.

The cumulative effect of trace amounts of pharmaceuticals and personal-care products in the water on humans isn't yet known, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking preventative measures. Pharmaceuticals have already been linked to behavioral and sexual mutations in fish, amphibians and birds, according to EPA studies.

Better sensors have revealed that trace amounts of pharmaceuticals, including narcotics, birth control, antidepressants and other controlled substances, are in the drinking water and in U.S. rivers, lakes and streams. The growing public debate on pharmaceuticals in water will heat up this summer as experts on both sideas of the issue try to convince the public that it's either much ado about nothing or another example of humans ignoring early warning signs such as deformed frogs -- the amphibian considered the canary in the coal mine when it comes to water issues.

The EPA suspects that part of the problem is consumers flushing old and unwanted drugs down toilets or drains. Americans are taking more drugs than ever -- especially the aging baby boomer generation. Pharmaceuticals were found in 80 percent of the samples taken during a U.S. Geological Survey and EPA study of 139 streams in 30 states. Many of America's wastewater treatment plants are not designed to remove pharmaceuticals and personal care products, the EPA says.

A 1999 (EPA and German) study of pharmaceutical and other personal-care products concluded the "undetectable effects on aquatic organisms are particularly worrisome because effects could accumulate so slowly that major change goes undetected until the cumulative level of these effects finally cascades to irreversible change -- change that would otherwise be attributed to natural adaptation or ecologic succession."

Meanwhile, federal officials continue to study the human health effects of the pharmaceutical compounds found in water known as endocrine disruptors, including possible links to neurological problems in children and increased incidence of some cancers. Federal officials are investigating a wide range of fish health problems in Cheasapeake Bay and its watershed. Several studies of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers have revealed inter-sex fish, a wide range of "abnormalities in which both male and female characteristics are present within the same fish."

The abnormalities include nine male smallmouth bass from the Potomac River near Sharpsburg, Maryland (about 60 miles upstream from Washington) that developed female eggs inside their sex organs. Inter-sex bass were also found in a study three years earlier, after fish kills about 170 miles upstream in the South Branch of the Potomac in Hardy County, West Virginia.

The suspected causes include "previously banned compounds…such as DDT and chlordane, natural and anthropogenic hormones, herbicides, fungicides, industrial chemicals and an emerging group of compounds that may act as endocrine disruptors," according to a 2006 summary of the various studies prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey. Other studies have linked endocrine disruptors to possible cancer in humans.

A recent survey of "cancer in Hardy County, where some residents get drinking water from the South Branch, found rates of cancer of the liver, gallbladder, ovaries and uterus that were higher than the state average," according to the Washington Post.

Officials are investigating whether there is a link between the increased cancer rates, river water and altered fish including the possible connection to wastewater discharges containing trace pharmaceuticals. This is disconcerting to residents of metro Washington, D.C., because the Potomac River is the main source (75 percent) of drinking water for 3.6 million residents, including the Maryland and Virginia suburbs.