Testing The Waters and Chemical Amounts in the Ohio

Transcript

The US EPA is becoming more concerned about the presence of drugs in drinking water, and has launched a survey to check for potentially harmful contaminants at the nationís water treatment plants. The announcement comes on the heels of another study looking at pharmaceuticals in the Ohio River. Ann Thompson reports for the Ohio River Radio Consortium.

THOMPSON: On a small motor boat stopping at 24 sites from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Illinois aquatic biologists Erich Emery and John Spaeth are taking water samples. Each time Spaeth fills two four-liter glass jugs attached to an aluminum pole.

SPAETH: 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.

THOMPSON: Spaeth and Emery work for Orsanco, an interstate water pollution control agency. It has identified locating and analyzing certain drugs and chemicals in the Ohio River as a top research priority. Until a few years ago pharmaceuticals, personal care products and human hormones, were not on Orsancos or even the US Environmental Protection Agency's radar screen. A series of Associated Press reports raised new concerns for the public in 2008. They found manufacturers, including drug makers, have legally released 271-million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterwaysÖ.and that regulators don't yet understand the potential health effects. Back in his office emery says he wanted to look at areas in the Ohio River where there was a high potential for contamination.

EMERY: 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.

THOMPSON: 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 Ranitidine. 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, mainly through human waste. Still, scientists say no one area of the Ohio River 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 parts per trillion.

EMERY: It's one drop in a swimming pool or it's one pancake in a stack of pancakes 16 miles high.

THOMPSON: 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 back on the boat,
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Emery says he did find certain contaminants and decided further study was needed.

EMERY: 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.
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THOMPSON: 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.
For the Ohio River Radio Consortium, I'm Ann Thompson in Cincinnati.