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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" color="#000099" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">http://hamptonroads.com/2014/08/changes-fish-signal-problems-waters<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;background:white"><b><font size="4" color="#444444" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#444444;font-weight:bold">Changes in fish signal problems with
waters<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
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<b><font size="1" color="#b71319" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:7.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#B71319;text-transform:uppercase;font-weight:bold">About editorials<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
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<b><font size="1" color="#666666" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:7.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#666666;font-weight:bold">Virginian-Pilot editorials</span></font></b><font size="1" color="#666666" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:7.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#666666">
represent the consensus of the editorial board, which is independent of the newsroom. Board members are David Mele, publisher;
<a href="http://hamptonroads.com/luzzatto"><font color="#0072ac"><span style="color:#0072AC;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;text-decoration:none">Donald Luzzatto</span></font></a>, editorial page editor; and
<a href="http://hamptonroads.com/hatcher"><font color="#0072ac"><span style="color:#0072AC;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;text-decoration:none">Candy Hatcher</span></font></a> and
<a href="http://hamptonroads.com/shawnday"><font color="#0072ac"><span style="color:#0072AC;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;text-decoration:none">Shawn Day</span></font></a>, editorial writers.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:#EBEBEB"><b><font size="1" color="#555555" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:7.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#555555;font-weight:bold">The issue</span></font></b><font size="1" color="#555555" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:7.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#555555">
Discovery of male fish with female parts correlates with high concentrations of chemicals in rivers.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt;line-height:8.4pt;background:#EBEBEB">
<b><font size="1" color="#555555" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:7.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#555555;font-weight:bold">Where we stand</span></font></b><font size="1" color="#555555" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:7.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#555555">
The compounds have been implicated in cancers, obesity and the decline of the bee population.
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><font size="3" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><font size="3" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">The Virginian-Pilot<br>
© August 12, 2014 <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">For more than a decade, scientists and policymakers have known that something has gone terribly wrong with the male
fish in the rivers leading to the Chesapeake Bay.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">They grow female parts. They produce eggs. In some places, the transformation occurs in 100 percent of the male fish
examined. As unsettling as the discovery of intersex fish was and remains, there's worse.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:6.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.6pt;background:white">
<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">Nobody knows for sure what's causing the fish to change gender, although there are plenty of theories.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">Those ideas have gone largely untested because there's not enough money to conduct the necessary experiments. If a decade's
scientific ignorance is inexcusable, it is especially so because scientists believe that what's happening to fish may have consequences for other species. Including humans.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">"But what are these things doing to the natural environment? If we find these things in wild organisms, there's a good
chance they're also affecting people," Vicki Blazer, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, told The Washington Post's Darryl Fears.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">Blazer was the lead author on a new study of fish in the rivers of Pennsylvania. The researchers found a correlation
between intersex fish and heavy agriculture and municipal sewage treatment plants.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">So far, male smallmouth bass with female bits have been found in the Susquehanna and the Potomac rivers, major tributaries
of the bay. Scientists have also found that the same chemicals transforming male fish are making them more susceptible to bacterial and parasitic infections.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">The scientists are especially worried about "chemicals that are not currently regulated or commonly monitored in the
aquatic environment such as pharmaceutical compounds (human and veterinary), natural and synthetic hormones, flame retardants, alkyl phenols, and other organic wastewater compounds."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">Even in minute amounts, some of those chemicals are known or suspected endocrine disruptors - powerful molecules that
mess with the hormones governing development and reproduction, among other biological systems. The compounds can be found in waste from animal agriculture and human settlement, in the chemicals sprayed on lawns and fields, and in the effluent from industry.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">In other words, endocrine disruptors are everywhere, including in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">"People are spraying these pesticides and herbicides around their homes," Blazer told The Post. "All of those things
we tend not to think about because of our lifestyle."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">Maryland is considering legislation that would require farmers to more precisely report the chemicals they're using.
The process would be expensive and would do nothing to measure the toxic load flowing from neighborhoods upstream from the bay and from sewage treatment facilities.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">Nevertheless, the co-incidence of heavy application of fertilizer at a time when juvenile fish are especially vulnerable
demands much more careful examination.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">The larger issue, however, remains the ominous omnipresence of such powerful chemicals in the environment. Endocrine
disruptors can be found in every drugstore and home improvement center, and therefore in almost every house in America. The compounds - even in minute amounts - are implicated in all kinds of modern maladies, from human cancers to obesity to the decimation
of the bee population.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<font size="2" color="black" face="Helvetica"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:windowtext">Something is clearly transforming the environment upstream from the Chesapeake Bay. It is turning male fish into females.
While they're searching for the cause, scientists and lawmakers might ponder what regulatory failures have allowed such powerful chemicals to be spread so widely.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" color="#000099" face="Times New Roman"><o:p> </o:p></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" color="#000099" face="Times New Roman"><o:p> </o:p></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:navy">Deborah L. DeBiasi</span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"><br>
</span></font><b><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:navy;font-weight:bold">Email: Deborah.DeBiasi@deq.virginia.gov</span></font></b><b><i><font size="2" color="red"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:red;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic"><br>
</span></font></i></b><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:navy">WEB site address:
<a href="http://www.deq.virginia.gov/">www.deq.virginia.gov</a></span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"><br>
</span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:navy">Virginia Department of Environmental Quality</span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"><br>
</span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:navy">Office of Water Permits
</span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"><br>
</span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:navy">Industrial Pretreatment/Whole Effluent Toxicity (WET) Program</span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"><br>
</span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:navy">PPCPs, EDCs, and Microconstituents<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"><a href="http://www.deq.virginia.gov/Programs/Water/PermittingCompliance/PollutionDischargeElimination/Microconstituents.aspx">http://www.deq.virginia.gov/Programs/Water/PermittingCompliance/PollutionDischargeElimination/Microconstituents.aspx</a></span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:navy"><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:navy">Mail: P.O. Box 1105, Richmond, VA 23218</span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"><br>
</span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:navy">Location: 629 E. Main Street, Richmond, VA 23219</span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:navy"><br>
</span></font><font size="2" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:navy">PH: 804-698-4028 FAX: 804-698-4032<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" color="#000099" face="Times New Roman"><o:p> </o:p></font></p>
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