Today for the third time in about a year, I signed up to hear a talk by Dana Kolpin who was slated to talk about his testing of pharmaceuticals, hormones and other contaminants. For the third time Dr. Kolpin was not able to give the presentation, but this time his assistant gave some general information about the research. It is anticipated that President Bush's new budget will completely eliminate this program. We can hope otherwise. Certainly forces have been at work for a long time to keep Dr. Kolpin's work under wraps because he was slated to give the results of his testing above and below Ames about a year ago. Here is a summary of the report at the conference on Agriculture and the Environment today. Pharmaceuticals, Hormones, and Other Emerging contaminants in U.S. Waters Toxic Substances Hydrology Program New chemicals are continually being produced to offer improvements in industry, agriculture, medicine and common household conveniences. This means we should have new reasons for concern because not much is known about the fate and transport of these substances. The USGS role is to provide reconnaissance on environmental occurrence, transport, persistence and effects of these chemicals. The first step was to develop analytical methods, which was done with the coordinated research of five laboratories. They tested Organic Wastewater Contaminants (OWCs) and steroid compounds, evaluating the environmental occurrence in susceptible waters. They found that the pathways for OWCs are domestic septic systems, industrial discharges and waste water treatment facilities. 139 streams in 30 states were tested, 62 in areas of intense animal feeding operations, 52 in intense urbanization, 17 mixed land use. In case you are adding, yes there is at least one category missing here. Among the substances they sampled are 22 antibiotics including 4 tetracyclines, 4 flourquinolones, 7 sulfiniates and also metabolites of these compounds; 14 prescription drugs; 5 non prescription drugs including acetaminophen, ibuprofen, caffeine; 15 hormones and sterols including cholesterol which is a sterol; and 39 household and industrial compounds including five detergents and their metabolites. Assuring the quality of the data quality was the most time consuming task in the process. The report was released internally March 1st. There will be OFA and DOI congressional briefings. The paper will be released in a journal on March 15th when the web based data report will be made available on the web. Until March 15th they can talk only about general results. Organic wastewater contaminants were found in 80% of the streams they tested. 82 of 95 organic wastewater contaminants were detected, representing a wide range of uses and sources. The concentrations were generally low. 25% of the sites had greater than 6 ug/l OWCs Few health standards or guidelines were exceeded, due in part to the fact that there are standards for only 14 of the 95 substances. Detection of multiple organic wastewater contaminants were common. 75% of the sites had one OWC, 35 had 20, one had 38. There was a graph comparing the detection frequency and concentration of the OWCs. Detergents at a 69% detection rate were the most dominant, steroids were a close second. They have completed the stream sampling at 239 sites in 30 states. The studies that have yet to be done are of 56 groundwater sites in 17 states and drinking water sources -76 sites which are to be funded in part by EPA. Other issues are antibiotic resistance , drinking water and wastewater treatment efficacy, chemical indicators of human fecal contamination, watershed cycling and more. There has been testing of antibiotics in fish hatcheries. In Big Spring, Pennsylvania, upstream of the treated raceway the amount was less than the detection standard. In the treated segment it was .56 and .74. They did a sampling network for an urban study, testing upstream and downstream in Des Moines, Ames, Marshalltown, Iowa City, Ottumwa and other Iowa cities. These results will also be available in this study By March 15th the report should be at http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/emc.htm/ The USGS toxics program can be found at http://toxics.usgs.gov/ Peggy Murdock