Another Scientist's Take on Hermaphrodite Fish

I think we're all on the same page about the hermaphrodite fish surfacing in our waterways. In case you missed the first installment, Dr. Alan S. Kolok (an environmental toxicologist who's researched the effects of estrogenic compounds in wastewater treatment on the feminization of male fish) let Surely You Nest know that, although hormones are indeed untreated pollutants at this time, the real danger's not in the tap water we drink but the swimming holes we might choose. He convinced me to lose the bottled water, go back to the tap and resume filtering.

Up today is an interview with an environmental, analytical, and marine chemistry professor who's also studying estrogens in our waterways. My eternal gratitude to Dr. Yuegang Zuo, Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Graduate School of Marine Sciences and Technology, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, for taking the time to answer my questions. Dr. Zuo recently conducted a study entitled Monitoring Estrogenic Hormones - Undesired Fish Contraceptives, and Investigating Their Sources, Transportation and Fate in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. I so appreciate his taking the time to consider my basic questions about water quality and safety.

My quick-and-dirty on this interview? Dr. Zuo notes that, although they're not yet designed to remove hormones, current wastewater treatment processes actually do take care of some percentage of the estrogens. Glad to hear it. Also, he notes that livestock operations in the Midwest actually are polluting drinking water sources with hormones (scratch the tapwater there, folks. And if you live in D.C., make sure your water's lead-free before jumping on the local water bandwagon). Sounds like on many fronts, more research is needed. Many thanks to Dr. Zuo and Dr. Kolok for the ongoing work they're doing to figure out the causes of intersex fish and ramifications of hormones in our waterways.

***

Dear Dr. Zuo:

Please forgive this intrusion into your professional life, but I am a resident of Washington, DC who is concerned about the large numbers of intersex fish in the Potomac. I've contacted my local officials and WASA, the local water authority, and was told that since this is an "emerging pollutant of concern" that's not covered by the Clean Water Act, no action's being taken to treat DC water.

Thank for your interest in the current research on estrogens and other endocrine disrupting pollutants in our aquatic environment. Your local officials and WASA were right that estrogens and other endocrine disrupting chemicals are a group of emerging environmental pollutants;

Furthermore, WASA indicated that there are no existing methods to treat wastewater to remove hormones. Just from surfing online, this seems not to be the case.

current waste water treatment processes are not designed to decompose these compounds; and they are not regulated by the environmental protection agency.

Do you know of cities in which wastewater treatment removes chemicals including estrogen?

Although the current waste water treatment processes are not designed to eliminate these pollutants, they do remove a significant fraction of these pollutant ranged from 10 ~ 90%. Both chlorination, UV-irradiation, microbial degradation and ozonation processes, which commonly used for the wastewater and drinking water treatment, can remove the concerned pollutants at least partially. However, the removal efficiency of the concerned pollutants has not been well studied yet.

Do you have any advice for me as I attempt to figure out a)how to get my water treatment facility to take this issue seriously?...and b)whether or not the hormones in my public water supply are of concern for my (small) children?

So far, most problems are associated with waste water effluents and livestock operation. Except sites contaminated by livestock operation in some Midwest locations, we have not noticed any drinking water contaminations by estrogenic hormones. To make sure, you may check if your city drinking water source is not contaminated by waste water effluents and livestock operation.

Best regards,

Yuegang Zuo, Ph.D.
Professor of Environmental, Analytical and Marine Chemistry
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

*photo courtesy of GNewman at sxc
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Food Fascination

Lately, like everyone, I've been riveted by the Sinclair-esque downer cows (via Gristmill) in our meat supply. My favorite description of the situation (at Eating Liberally) called out the meat plants for "bovine water boarding."

Sometimes, in fact oftentimes, the frugal thing to do (bagging lunches) is also healthier. Last I checked, there weren't very many organic, free-range, locally- and sustainably-farmed, whole-grain, additive-, preservative-, and synthetic dye-free items on the school lunch menu.

But I figured last week was the safest time in history to relent and let our kid get a much-desired Hot Lunch or two since all of the bad press caused our school district to yank meat, recall or no, from the menus. C'mon, didn't you trade your lunches back in the day? Hostess Ding-Dongs being the platinum currency of lunchbox wampum. Kids can't do that now, what with food allergies on the rise and all. So to take an item off the Delightfully Forbidden Fruit list you have to bend the rules now and again.

EGirl had a (persistant organic pollutant-laced) fish sandwich (on white GMO bread) and some (bGH) cheese pizza. But her favorite part (and my favorite description?) was the milk: "Mom, it was chocolate and even though it wasn't organic? It tasted so cold and delicious that it seemed like it really was." Ah, everlasting sweetness.

Below: less musing, more foodbits...

• This cool tool at Foodsel allows you to see nifty visual guides to food contents. Like if you eat a Krispy Kreme, what does that really mean? Why, a fifth of a stick of butter and four sugar cubes just went down your gullet. But you got 16 batteries' worth of energy. And if you're my weight, to burn off the calories, you could play lawn darts for two hours and 16 minutes. (via Lifehacker)
• This nifty little list by Kid Safe Seafood answers the question on a lot of parents' minds -- just tell me what fish is safe for the little ones to eat. A-OK to gobble = shrimp, scallops, salmon, cod, crayfish, mussels, and tilapia. (via Green Mom Finds)
• Rocket fuel's in all of our food. Sigh. (chipper fact courtesy of EWG).
  
• Get rid of those teflon pans, easy to clean though they may be. (more EWG).
  
• Americans may be fatter than the French because we look to external cues to tell us when to stop eating (like whether The Daily Show's still running) rather than internal cues like satiety. Blame it on the Clean Plate Club, eh? (via Science Daily)
• A tip from Zen Habits to help you stop eating sweets after dinner: brush your teeth right away. You won't want to mess with your minty freshness. Plus, you can get your kids on the path to bedtime pronto.
  
• An aside in a recent Gristmill story about wine and chocolate pairings noted that highbrow chocolate is fair trade because really expensive chocolate is made from custom grown cacao and therefore is free of forced child labor. It's also relatively pesticide-free, labeling or no, so gobble up that Valrhona.
• Safeway's getting on board with animal rights. (also via Grist) First an organic line and now bunny-love? More to love than just the hook-ups....
• Button mushrooms are just as healthy if not healthier than highbrow expensive fungi like shitaake or porcini. Mmmmmmushroooms. (via Science Daily)
• Here's a thorough piece at the Boulder explaining the debate about big organic milk producers like oh-horror-a ahem Aurora and whether or not they are fauxbies breaking the spirit of organics or the real deal. (via chewswise)
• Another reason to bag the nuggets? Runoff from conventional poultry farms is polluting waterways like the Chesapeake Bay. (via NPR)
  
• Cool resource: a list of high fiber veggies. Apparently avocados have way more fiber than carrots. Who'da thunkit? (from A Veggie Venture)

Happy Wednesday!

*Photo via sxc - for more of ramasamy chidambaram's work, see http://www.studiosrishti.com

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Whither Our Water? Addressing Hormones in Local Waterways

Biology Professor Gives SurelyYouNest the Straight Dope
on Endocrine Disruptors in our Waterways

Anyone who has a kid, heck, anyone who drinks water has done a double-take on the hermaphrodite fish in our waterways. Um, are egg-producing male fish swimming around in my iced tea water? I'm just askin'.

Hermaphroditism isn't just rampant in the Potomac River here in the nation's capitol. Intersex fish are showing up in waterways all over the country. They're not sure why (birth control pills and chicken farm runoff are two top candidates), and most wastewater treatment plants are doing exactly, ah, nothing about it. My local councilmember emailed our water and sewer authority and they had this to say: Not it! We aren't doing anything atall because it's not mandated by the Clean Water Act but if forced to by regulations we will address the hormone issue in the future. In slightly more positive language, of course:

WASA is aware of the presence of these chemicals in wastewater and in the waterways. The science and technology of treating these chemicals in large waste treatment facilities have not been developed yet. Presently, these are not regulated by the federal Clean Water Act. WASA will continue to monitor developments related to these and other emerging pollutants of concern, and will take necessary steps as required and is feasible, especially to comply with related regulatory requirements. As with other chemicals that impact the environment, the most effective steps to take is to control these at the source, and any steps that can be taken to do so would be welcome.

The EPA gave hormones in the the Potomac a concern ranking of eight back in 2006. DCist had this to say at the time:

Presumably this eight lies on your typical scale of one to ten, one being "someone might have peed in the river" and ten being "water-loving alien creatures have made the Potomac their homebase to mete out the destruction of the human race."

A pollutant of emerging concern? I'll say it again, holy man-boobs, Batman! I want to drink clean water. And I know that tap water is more environmentally friendly but I have been loath to drink DC's H2O. Heck, I have been par-tic-u-lar about my water since I was in high school -- when I first posted about my water sourcing agonies here, my friend's mom wrote in chuckling to remind me that I wouldn't even come for sleepovers without my trusty Brita pitcher.

Ah, the power of an interview with a kind, generous-with-his time scientist and professor to ease my mind! Turns out my creative writing degree makes for some wonderfully imaginative bedtime stories but proved dead wrong on the drinking water front. And not just because our federal government hasn't put a finger on the source of their concern yet. It's because the water we swim in is more likely to have issues than the water we drink. See below for the details -- but from now on, it's a sigh of relief and back to the tap for me. I'll be quaffing local water to hydrate while I figure out how to register my concern about chemicals in our waterways, and the impact on not only marine life (some of which we eat) but our swimming holes.

My eternal gratitude to Dr. Alan S. Kolok at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, for taking so much time (on a holiday weekend, no less) to answer my questions. Dr. Kolok is an environmental toxicologist who has researched the effects of estrogenic compounds in wastewater treatment with regard to the feminization of male fish.

***

Dear Dr. Kolok:

Please forgive this intrusion into your professional life, but I am a resident of Washington, DC who is concerned about the large numbers of intersex fish in the Potomac. I've contacted my local officials and WASA, the local water authority, and was told that since this is an "emerging pollutant of concern" that's not covered by the Clean Water Act, no action's being taken to treat DC water.

DrK: That is true.

Furthermore, WASA indicated that there are no existing methods to treat wastewater to remove hormones. Just from surfing online, this seems not to be the case.

DrK: I am not aware of municipalities that have made changes to their treatment specifically to remove hormones. However, there is a growing dataset supporting that aerobic digestion of is an effective remidiation technology for hormones.

Do you know of cities in which wastewater treatment removes chemicals including estrogen?

DrK: In Nebraska the small cities that have incorporated aerobic digestion at their facilities have not been found to be releasing hormones into the environment. I know of at least two facilities in Nebraska that do not use aerobic digestion and are releasing hormones into the environment. This has been found to be true in other states and other countries as well.

Do you have any advice for me as I attempt to figure out a)how to get my water treatment facility to take this issue seriously?

DrK: There are two components to water treatment: wastewater treatment and drinking water. While wastewater treatment has been shown to contain steroids, I am not aware of any studies finding significant concentrations of steroids in drinking water. I would be very surprised to find that both the drinking water and
waste water facilities in D.C. were not concerned about the issue. What to do about it, and how to generate the funds and political will to get it done is a very different matter.

...and b)whether or not the hormones in my public water supply are of concern for my (small) children?

DrK: Your drinking water is most likely safe. In fact, with governmental regulations for drinking water, the water that you get out of the tap is probably better for you than the water that you could drink out of a plastic bottle! Buy a Brita filter (these are fairly cheap) and keep filtered tap water in your fridge, if you are still concerned (this is what my family does).

Sewage effluent will not be a direct problem for your children providing you are vigilent about where they swim (in Connecticut, when I grew up, I used to swim at a beach near a river that drained the town dump! I wouldn't let my children swim there today), and also where your fresh seafood comes from.If you fish or enjoy other local seafood, make sure that you eat in moderation and that it comes from clean environments.

Remember that fish live in water constantly, and are subjected to every chemical dissolved in the water. Your children have a much more limited access to water, and short of swimming, their exposure to raw, untreated water is very minimal.

Alan S. Kolok
Professor
Department of Biology
University of Nebraska at Omaha

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Facing My Food

So, I am going to be upfront about the fact that I am not a vegan, just a carnivore who's more than a little unhappy about our mainstream food supply. Please, mercy! Uncle? You had me at CAFOs. I don't need any more convincing. I swear, I will try very, very hard to buy meat from local farmers. It's almost enough to make a person turn to insects... (protein tip via Eating Liberally) When are the cicada swarms coming back to DC again?

Apologizing in advance for the Faces of Death nature of this post. Ahem.

Lou, lou, skip to my (linky) lou...

• Y'all knew this already, my Fallonite friends, but grassfed meat is worth the extra cash (March Consumer Reports preview).

• And not just because of the recalled mystery meat the downer-cow-tipping industry has been foisting off onto our schoolchildren. Did you read about the crazy neurological disease the poor pig-killers got from, um, pork brains? (via the NYT) Or that the poor broiler chickens bred for their breast meat poundage are having trouble walking? (via Science Daily)

• Here's some help in the form of an online guide to sustainable, organic, local, and/or ethical grub — SOLE food, for short (thanks, Ethicurean, for the term and for so many of these disturbing tidbits). I already found a local butcher that has grassfed beef (not the grain-finished stuff you can find at Whole Foods) for when my Polyface Farms freezer stash runs out. If you live in the DC area, fyi, Polyface will start delivering again this spring in March.

• Then there's the eminently logical choice of eating fish. I've already posted about contaminants in fish, but a handy wallet guide that covers both contamination and enviro concerns can be found via the Monterey Bay Aquarium (thanks to my beloved Bozeman reader for that tip). If you forget your sustainable fish list while shopping, just text 30644 with the message FISH and the name of the fish in question. Blue Ocean Institute will "text you back with our assessment and better alternatives to fish with significant environmental concerns." Pretty cool tip, via Chews Wise.

• Finally, something I never thought about. When you're choosing fish, try to eat lower on the fish food chain (ie squid, mussels, etc.) -- more sustainable and fewer pollutants. Via Culinate.

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Nuuuurdles

I can't get this out of my mind.






It's from Plastic Ocean, an article about, well, more than what kind of bag you use to transport your groceries. A sailor from Southern California named Charles Moore came across a vast dead zone of trash teeming with plastic (including discarded kayaks) when he went off course while racing. He was so aghast at what he found that now he runs a foundation that sends expeditions out to do oceanic research and educates the public about plastic pollution in the ocean. The Garbage Patch in the Pacific he discovered (similar dead zones are found across the globe) is twice the size of Texas.

The picture above (by Gregg Segal) pretty much captures the egregious impact of plastic on marine life. I'm sure you all have heard that the teeny tiny plastic crap we give out as party favors ends up choking baby seals or that the plastic carriers for your six-pack may end up strangling tiny otters as they grow, or, as it turns out, grossly misshaping a sea turtle. What the picture doesn't capture is how omnipresent plastic is in our lives (start looking around your house -- and start trying to even minimally reduce your plastics usage and you'll become truly alarmed) not to mention how dangerous that plastic can be. The BPA lining our cans that may slowly migrate into our food? Try boatloads of tiny wayward particles of plastic called nurdles that each could bring a toxic load of persistent organic pollutants right to your dinner table...

"The word itself—nurdles—sounds cuddly and harmless, like a cartoon character or a pasta for kids, but what it refers to is most certainly not. Absorbing up to a million times the level of POP pollution in their surrounding waters, nurdles become supersaturated poison pills. They’re light enough to blow around like dust, to spill out of shipping containers, and to wash into harbors, storm drains, and creeks. In the ocean, nurdles are easily mistaken for fish eggs by creatures that would very much like to have such a snack. And once inside the body of a bigeye tuna or a king salmon, these tenacious chemicals are headed directly to your dinner table. One study estimated that nurdles now account for 10 percent of plastic ocean debris."

--Susan Casey, Plastic Ocean in Best Life Magazine

Article above via Fake Plastic Fish, a blog about living plastic-free, and a pretty fascinating read in and of itself.

And now, since it is incredibly difficult to avoid plastic even when you try pretty hard, I thought I would allow a marine mammal to cheer us on up. Thanks, Treehugger, for the link. Hope we can all do Flipper the favor of examining the plastics in our lives to see just how essential we think they are....



Dolphin Play Bubble Rings Read more!

Fishing for Absolution

Organizing the abode and eating well. Valid goals. I am sure that you already got the news that wild salmon is well beyond the reach of most middle class Americans better for you but like me, may occasionally be unable to present a cogent argument as to why this is so.

Environmental Working Group to the rescue once again! Always buy wild salmon because it's got less mercury than farmed salmon, which is fed scary bits of other animals and/or genetically modified monocrops blecch has problematic polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs which have no safe ingestion level. For us on the East Coast, this means no salmon if you want to eat local. Alas, there is no wild Atlantic salmon anymore....

Other, more affordable good choices? I was just pondering this at the fish case yesterday when I could not for the life of me remember whether I should buy that cheap frozen multi-pack of orange roughy (hah! I knew I shouldn't get it! Not sustainably fished and high in mercury! But I had to go back and look at my November 11 post). I really will print out a wallet card that has all of the permutations I care about on it soon, but until then, repeat after me: mahi-mahi, haddock, tilapia, flounder and sole are not only low in PCBs, but mercury as well. And you can't go wrong with a can of sardines. Obviously, women who haven't had kids yet (nasty chemicals accumulate in your body and then go right into your infant when you breastfeed), pregnant/lactating women, and small children need to be especially careful about which fish they eat.

***

Via Baby Toolkit awhile back, the word of the day is...

scurryfunge: a hasty tidying of the house between the time you see a neighbor coming and the time she knocks on the door. (Informal English).

Now, what might we call it if, say, a person knew that a good friend was visiting soon and, eh, decided to attend to pressing etymological matters and researching paper-making techniques rather than tidying? Even if the host in question had an unrelenting head cold?? Hmmmm? (Languorhovelling? Procrastisqualoration?)

Love this essay on gratitude, from Chris Glass, about unexpected hospitality and pleasure. Suffice it to say, that, amongst other things, the author learns about the joys of having an unwrapping "compadre." And I think he might extrapolate that togetherness trumps the downside of squalor. Wild salmon lox or no. Read more!

Sleeping Like A Neurologically Impaired Baby: Holy Mackerel! Eat Herring Instead

Well, the experts have been flopping a bit on this issue but the basic gist is that there is mercury in the really healthy deep sea fish that have high levels of beneficial omega-3s in them. And since mercury's particularly damaging for small people, pregnant or nursing women and children have had to closely watch their fish intake. (Which is a bummer, since among other benefits it seems that a high intake of the DHA fatty acids in fish could account for better sleep in infants, no small feat.) There are handy lists of fish to avoid, mercury calculators like those here and here, and lists of fish that are safe to eat. Recently it seemed like the evidence weighed in favoring eating more fish over avoiding it for groups watching mercury exposure, but research showing that it's better to consume fish than not while pregnant may have been funded by -- surprise -- the fish industry. So we're back to the longstanding advice that women of childbearing/nursing age should eat 2 servings/week of fish and limit their consumption to specific species (the fish industry study recommended greater consumption without regard to species). One fish that's been hotly debated because it's a beloved kid sandwich food is tuna, which the research shows you should probably limit no matter the type (albacore vs. light).

Testing of fish oil has shown that most is not contaminated with mercury (your grandmother was right about that cod liver oil!) but since supplements aren't heavily regulated you have to choose brands carefully. American Heart has helpful guidelines on supplementing with fish oil.

In a parallel vein, lots of enviro organizations have lists of what's sustainably fished. This site helpfully lets you track down environmentally conscious restaurants serving sustainably harvested fish. And Environmental Defense has a downloadable pocket reference guide to enviro choices re sustainably fished species. But my favorite is the NRDC guide, which combines the mercury warnings with the sustainability info in their wallet card.

The bottom line? Avoid tuna, shark, tilefish (golden bass or snapper), swordfish, orange roughy, bluefish, and sea bass. Eat as much as you want of catfish, anchovies, clams, crabs, pollock, oysters, wild salmon (not farmed, which has PCBs), sardines, sole, herring, tilapia and trout. Also, try to eat lots of fish high in omega-3s like herring, sardines, oysters and salmon. Check out the lists for further fine-tuning of this advice, and try to eat a variety of the safe fish. Read more!