American freshwater fish contain pharmaceuticals

Researchers said on Wednesday that fish caught near used water treatment stations used by five important cities in the U.S. contained traces of pharmaceuticals.

The cities were Philadelphia, Dallas, Chicago, Orlando and Phoenix.

The medicines were for depression, allergies, high cholesterol and blood pressure and bipolar disorder.

Much of this pollution comes from non-metabolised traces of medicines that have been taken and then excreted. Discarding medications into drains is also a factor.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has, as a result, decided to increase similar research to over 150 separate sites.

Bryan Brooks co-author of the report said that hopefully people would now understand the significance of knowing about water they consume every day, its sources and its final destinations.

Water is a scarce resource and we need to understand much more how we affect it, he commented.

Brooks has written more than twelve studies about the impact of pharmaceuticals on the environment. He is a researcher for Baylor University.

An individual needs to consume many thousands of fish meals to ingest just one dose of the medicines, Brooks said.

Brooks and other researchers have discovered that even exceedingly watered down amounts of pharmaceutical remains are harmful to frogs, fish, and other marine creatures because of continuous contact with impure water.

The researchers, analysed the fish for 24 different pharmaceutical products, together with 12 chemicals used in the manufacture of personal care items.

Fish from all the five cities contained two chemicals to make scents in soaps and residual traces of seven medicines.

The quantities were not constant, but some fish had an amalgamation of many of the substances in their livers.

The work was funded by a $150,000 EPA grant.

The study was published online yesterday by the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry journal and it was also presented in Salt Lake City to the American Chemical Society.

The EPA has requested further research about the influence on humans of long-term drinking of water, which contains residual amounts of drugs, particularly in unidentified groupings.

Early laboratory research points to human cells not growing or changing to abnormal shapes in humans who are exposed to specific pharmaceutical mixes in drinking water.

Suzanne Rudzinski of the EPA said this provisional analysis is one method for EPA to augment its scientific knowledge about the incidence of pharmaceuticals and personal care material in the environment.