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