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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/drugs-flooding-into-puget-sound-and-its-salmon/">http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/drugs-flooding-into-puget-sound-and-its-salmon/</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">Puget Sound salmon are on drugs — Prozac, Advil, Benadryl, Lipitor, even cocaine.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">Those drugs and dozens of others are showing up in the tissues of juvenile chinook, researchers have found, thanks to tainted wastewater discharge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">The estuary waters near the outfalls of sewage-treatment plants, and effluent sampled at the plants, were cocktails of 81 drugs and personal-care products,
with levels detected among the highest in the nation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">The medicine chest of common drugs also included Flonase, Aleve and Tylenol. Paxil, Valium and Zoloft. Tagamet, OxyContin and Darvon. Nicotine and caffeine.
Fungicides, antiseptics and anticoagulants. And Cipro and other antibiotics galore.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:6.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-line-height-alt:13.8pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<![if !supportLists]><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Symbol;text-decoration:none"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span></span><![endif]><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20"><a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/drugs-flooding-into-puget-sound-and-its-salmon/"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:6.0pt;mso-line-height-alt:13.8pt">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#0777B3"><a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/drugs-flooding-into-puget-sound-and-its-salmon/"><span style="color:#0777B3;text-decoration:none"><img border="0" width="299" height="192" id="Picture_x0020_5" src="cid:image001.jpg@01D16FAB.F83AD130" alt="null"></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext;text-decoration:none"><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:6.0pt;mso-line-height-alt:13.8pt">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif"><a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/drugs-flooding-into-puget-sound-and-its-salmon/">Cocaine, Prozac, other drugs found in Puget Sound salmon from
tainted wastewater</a></span></span><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20"><a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/subscribe/signup/?icn=promo-most-read&ici=subscribe"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;color:white">Unlimited
Digital Access. $1 for 4 weeks.</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">Why are the levels so high? It could be because people here use more of the drugs detected, or it could be related to wastewater-treatment plants’ processes,
said Jim Meador, an environmental toxicologist at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle and lead author on a
<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749116300884" target="_blank">
paper</a> published this week in the journal Environmental Pollution.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">“The concentrations in effluent were higher than we expected,” Meador said. “We analyzed samples for 150 compounds and we had 61 percent of them detected
in effluent. So we know these are going into the estuaries.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">The samples were gathered over two days in September 2014 from Sinclair Inlet off Bremerton and near the mouth of Blair Waterway in Tacoma’s Commencement
Bay.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">The chemicals turned up in both the water and the tissues of migratory juvenile chinook salmon and resident staghorn sculpin. If anything, the study probably
underreports the amount of drugs in the water closer to outfall pipes, or in deeper water, researchers found.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">Even fish tested in the intended control waters in the Nisqually estuary, which receives no direct municipal treatment-plant discharge, tested positive for
an alphabet soup of chemicals in supposedly pristine waters.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">“That was supposed to be our clean reference area,” Meador said. He also was surprised that levels in many cases were higher than in many of the
<a href="http://www.epa.gov/water-research/concentrations-prioritized-pharmaceuticals-effluents-50-large-wastewater-treatment" target="_blank">
50 largest wastewater-treatment plants</a> around the nation. Those plants were sampled in another study by the EPA.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">The findings are of concern because most of the chemicals detected are not monitored or regulated in wastewater, and there is little or no established science
on the environmental toxicity for the vast majority of the compounds detected.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">Meador said he doubted there would be effects from the chemicals on human health, because people don’t eat sculpin or juvenile chinook, and levels are probably
too low in the water to be active in humans. But one of the reasons the wastewater pollutants studied as a class are called “chemicals of emerging concern” is because so little is known about them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">However, “You have to wonder what it is doing to the fish,” Meador said. His
<a href="http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjfas-2013-0130#.Vsy9NFsrJD8" target="_blank">
other recent work</a> has shown that juvenile chinook salmon migrating through contaminated estuaries in Puget Sound die at twice the rate of fish elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">The drugs detected in the study could be part of the reason, as they have the potential to affect fish growth, behavior, reproduction, immune function and
antibiotic resistance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20"><img border="0" width="1020" height="680" id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image002.jpg@01D16FAB.F83AD130" alt="Scientists were surprised to find Prozac and other drugs in Puget Sound waters and fish at some of the highest levels reported in the country."></span><span class="caption2"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">Scientists
were surprised to find Prozac and other drugs in Puget Sound waters and fish at some of the highest levels reported in the country.</span></span><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">The drugs selected for testing were chosen on the basis of their widespread use by people, the likelihood of their continued use and the potential for higher
levels of contamination in the future as the human population in the Puget Sound region continues to grow.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">The results represent only a snapshot, and levels could be higher or lower, seasonally, depending on people’s use of drugs and volumes of treatment-plant
discharge. For instance, levels of DEET (an insect repellent) and antihistamines are probably even higher in summer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">Some regional differences were detected.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">Substantially higher concentrations of DEET, caffeine, ibuprofen and female reproductive hormone were found in Bremerton effluent, compared with the Tacoma
site, which researchers concluded could be due to differences in usage.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">The Puget Sound area contains 106 publicly owned wastewater-treatment plants that discharge to local waters.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">The amount of drugs and chemicals from all plants into Puget Sound could be as much as 97,000 pounds every year, the study found.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">Unexplored were the presence and effect of drugs in predators that eat the fish, and in other contaminated organisms that the fish eat, such as algae or
invertebrates.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">The Nisqually estuary was more contaminated than expected with drugs, including cocaine, Cipro and Zantac. The source of the drugs there was unknown, the
researchers reported. However, the Nisqually River, Nisqually Reach and McAllister Creek do not meet water-quality standards for fecal coliform. That makes leaking septic systems a possible source of the drugs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">Treatment plants in King County are effective in removingsome drugs in wastewater, but many drugs are recalcitrant and remain. Seizure drugs, for instance,
are very hard to remove, and ibuprofen levels are knocked down — but not out — during treatment, said Betsy Cooper, permit administrator for the county’s Wastewater Treatment Division.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">“You have treatment doing its best to remove these, chemically and biologically, but it’s not just the treatment quality, it’s also the amount that we use
day to day and our assumption that it just goes away,” Cooper said. “But not everything goes away.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">Jessica Payne, spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology, said the agency needs more research funding to monitor the presence and examine the impact
of chemicals such as those identified in the study.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">“Ongoing research is really our best tool to understand these chemicals,” Payne said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height:20.25pt"><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#231F20">The study was not concerned with drinking water. Seattle Public Utilities customers receive first-use water from the high Cascades, above any wastewater
discharge and remote from human populations and septic tanks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Laurie Tenace<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Environmental Specialist<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Waste Reduction Section<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Florida Department of Environmental Protection<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">2600 Blair Stone Road, MS4555<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tallahassee, FL 32399<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:Laurie.Tenace@dep.state.fl.us">Laurie.Tenace@dep.state.fl.us</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">850.245.8759<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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