Local Features
(2010-02-25)
Listen Now:
null
Researcher collecting water samples
www.ohioriverradio.org
"We dip it-we usually do a quick wash and we push the bottles down about three feet from the surface and wait for the bottles to fill you can see the air bubbles coming up."
Spaeth and Emery work for Orsanco, an interstate water pollution control agency. It has identified locating and analyzing certain drugs and chemicals as a top research priority. Until a few years ago pharmaceuticals, personal care products and human hormones, were not on the EPA's radar screen. Although one part of the Orsanco study had already been done, an associated press investigation raised new concerns for the public last spring. It found U.S. manufacturers, including drug makers, have legally released 271-million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways. Emery wanted to look at areas in the Ohio River where there was a high potential for contamination.
"These included of course like the areas around Pittsburgh where there is a large concentration of people very close to the river. We also chose background areas that are about as far removed as you can from major urban areas."
Researcher collecting water samples
Results are now back from a Canadian lab, and Emery and Spaeth are beginning to comb through them. Of the 158 compounds tested, 99 were in at least one sample. In every sample were deet, a bug spray ingredient, cholesterol, and an industrial surfactant used to make Teflon. In 80 90 percent of the samples scientists found caffeine, and the commonly taken pharmaceuticals naproxen, and ranitdine. An ingredient in birth control pills was in 50-percent of the samples. So where are these chemicals coming from? Emery says they get to the water supply through a variety of ways.
"Pharmaceuticals pass through your body. They are not completely metabolized, so they come out in your waste stream. That's how they get through the human source. Additionally-people have been known to dump unwanted medication down the toilet or the drain, which we advise they don't do that."
Scientists say no one area of the Ohio River has higher concentrations of these drugs and chemicals than another. When Emery analyzes the results further, he expects levels to be very small, at the parts per trillion.
"It's one drop in a swimming pool or it's one pancake in a stack of pancakes 16 miles high."
He says to date there haven't been any studies that suggest risk to humans when these chemicals occur at such low levels, however, this is uncharted territory. Researchers do have concern over the fish and other creatures that live in the water 24-7. A 2005 ORSANCO study didn't find evidence that hormones in the river had effects on the sexual development of fish. But Emery says he did find certain contaminants and he decided further study was needed.
"When these things were designed and even today as they are being designed, we don't know how important it is to remove these things. We're still trying to look in and develop what technologies need to be in place to remove them."
When the final report comes out this Spring, ORSANCO will provide a copy to drinking water and waste water utilities, and hopes to do more research on where these compounds are coming from and how often they are showing up in the Ohio River.
© Copyright 2012, wkms
