“Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.”
Of course Samuel Taylor Coleridge was talking about the ocean when he wrote that line from the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” but it’s a fitting epitaph for our freshwater supply these days it seems. Between dumping pollutants, rubbish, human waste, and run-off, our lakes, rivers, and streams, are running worse for wear. This has an effect on us eventually, but there’s someone this affects immediately. The ecology in and around the rivers. Namely, the fish.
In recent years environmentalists and ecological supporters have been banding together behind local governments and deep pockets and trying to clean up these environmental hazards. From the 19-year-old student Boyan Slat who came up with an ambitious project to clean our oceans, to the EPA finally recognizing the fact that you shouldn’t be able to ignite the surface of the Hudson River (Thought that one was obvious…), cleanup and conservation is on the forefront of everyone’s mind.
I know what you’re thinking. “Uh…don’t we have waste Treatment Facilities that handle all that “crap”” Yes and no. Water Treatment plants are equipped to handle large particles but when it comes to the microscopic stuff, sometimes that slips through.
And not much is more microscopic than Pharmaceutical waste.
Today at TI&IT we’re going to talk about Big Pharma (yay…) in a big way, how their effluent affects the local wildlife, Prozac and Ibuprofen, Hormesis, and Electrodeionization. If none of that made sense to you that’s okay. Let’s see if we can clarify it all by the end of this article today.
Let’s start with the big issue first. Pharmaceuticals in the water supply.
Little Swimmers
Personally, I loathe the pharmaceutical industry, which is why it saddens me to say that while they are at the epicenter of the issue, they are not the sole cause of the water contamination. Pharmaceutical corporations (here in the U.S. anyway) have strict EPA guidelines they’re required to follow. Most comply, those that don’t, well, they face the wrath of the environmentalists.
Turns out the real culprit here, is us. Well, at least, those of us who take prescription medications. Our bodies don’t use most of the chemicals found in our medications, they expel the excess in the form of waste, urine. That urine is sent to the water treatment plant where it’s moved through multiple cleansing processes before coming out the other side as a drinkable agent once more and is then returned to the ecology.
But there’s a problem. These treatment facilities aren’t equipped to handle breaking down chemicals we expel like Fluoxetine and Norfluoxetine which are the active ingredients found in Prozac. In a study published by Nature in 2003, a wastewater-treatment facility in Texas came under scrutiny when several species of fish downriver from them began showing strange signs and symptoms. Turns out, they all had high concentrations of these compounds, and others, in their brains, livers, and muscles.
The researchers said that while you’d have to eat a lot of these contaminated Crappie to feel the effects of the Prozac (dude this Bluegill is like…making me totally chill right now…) the fish don’t need the anti-depressants. I mean, who are we to say they’re depressed? (Yes Mr. Trout, but how do you really feel?)
The real problem is that fishy physiology is significantly different from our own. Prozac to a depressed human can perk the person up, Lorazepam can calm us down, and Vicodin can take away or ease the pain of a tweaked disc, but what do these drugs do to our little swimmers in the water supply? Lots of studies have been conducted, and none of them look good, even the ones that are supposedto look good.
Let’s make an appointment with a Mackerel and see if we can’t sift through to the sediment of this issue.
Druggie Fish Drop Out Of Schools
In 2003 there were no strict EPA guidelines for policing the toxins produced by pharmaceutical effluent. Effluent is the outflow of wastewater from the facility producing a consumer good of some kind. By 2011, as more and more studies were published on the effects this had on fish, these rules and guidelines changed. But how was it changing the fish?
Pharmaceutical runoff isn’t like pesticides and toxic waste. It doesn’t immediately kill the fish. In fact, the concentrations of chemicals that are found in the runoff can have positive or negative effects on them depending on how you look at it. Either way, it’s unnatural.
In 2010 another study in Nature dug into the mating habits of Fathead Minnows that had been exposed to high concentrations of the chemicals triclosan and triclocarbon. Both are antibacterial agents found in soap and other household cleansers that get flushed down the drain. Both are microscopic enough in size to pass right through treatment facilities without being removed from the water.
Melissa Schultz, the head researcher of the study from a college in Wooster, Ohio, United States is quoted as saying, “It’s easy to tell if a fish suffers from obvious anatomical changes such as being intersex or not having mature secondary sexual characteristics, [but determining the effects on mating behavior] takes more meticulous work.”
After filling aquariums with water and minnows and exposing them to the two chemicals mentioned above, she began to observe some peculiar behavior. After contamination levels reached .01 - .5 micrograms per litre, (also referred to here as parts per billion [ppb]) which are the levels that are found occurring in their native habitats, males became a little less adamant about defending their nests from predators. That’s bad.
Another study focused on the anti-inflammatory drug Ibuprofen. After Zebra fish were exposed to 50 µg/L (micrograms per litre) of the drug they began to show a reduction in courtship behavior. While natural levels of Ibuprofen in the environment typically only reach 20 µg/L scientists say there’s no real difference in the magnitude of the impact it has.
See Ibuprofen works by inhibiting two enzymes in the human body called COX-1 and COX-2 which are part of the pathway to producing Prostaglandins. Prostaglandins play a key part in the inflammation process, but in fish, it’s a pheromone that deals with their mating behavior. If this is thrown too far out of whack, it could lead to irregular breeding patterns.
Or a lack thereof.
There are other studies as well. In 2013 a study of Perch involving the anti-anxiety medication Oxazepam showed that fish exposed to high concentrations of this displayed much more aggressive behavior. As dosages were increased their behavior went from fighting with other males more frequently, obsessive compulsive nest-building habits, ignoring females entirely, to killing females for interfering with their nest-building activities. Prozac has also been found to have some strange effects on fish as well.
Not all studies are negative however. Researchers in Sweden took some Eurasian Perch and exposed them Oxazepam just like here, but they took a different approach to the matter. Standard studies are set up to use fish in a control group that are typically unstressed to begin with and are bred for 100% survivability. Nature is far crueler than we are and there is no such thing in a standard ecosystem as 100% survivability.
So the researchers, led by Jonatan Klaminder at Umeå University, decided to use wild fish. Two seperate groups were set up, one that was clusters of eggs (Roes), and the other was full of two-year old healthy fish that only had just thawed from a cold winter. The fish were split up and one group was exposed to 1,000 µg/L whereas the others were only exposed to 1.9 µg/L. The lower levels mimicked those found naturally occurring in urban neighborhoods around the area.
Mortality rate was high in the lower concentration group’s hatchlings, which was to be expected, but what wasn’t expected is what happened to the group exposed to 1,000 µg/L. It improved the survival rate of hatchlings and also in the mature fish. Klaminder states, “It’s a new era of contamination research if we want to include pharmaceuticals, because their effects are not as traditional as our thinking.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a good thing. Ecosystems lovehomeostasis. Nature is constantly working to achieve what it considers a perfect balance despite our misconstrued opinion of what that may be. If more Perch survive their hatching, that means there will be more Perch in the area. This can lead to over-predation of local food sources or to the extinction of another species entirely. The far reaching implications of this research still aren’t well understood.
What seems really odd is the behavioral effects of a drug intended to calm people down. It seemed to have an opposite result on the Perch in the study. Fish exposed to higher concentrations were more bold, more aggressive, and less sociable. One possible explanation of this is the phenomenon known as Hormesis.
What is Hormesis you ask? It’s the subject of our next topic.
“I Hate You! I Love You! Oh Look Something Shiny…”
Hormesis is defined as a toxin or chemical having a generally favorable biological response in nature when administered in low concentrations as opposed to the opposite effect in higher dosages. This effect is not very well understood yet as the science on it is relatively new, so new in fact that scientists are still debating on whether or not to include Hormetics as a real study.
Klaminder’s Eurasian Perch study is a fine example of Hormesis so let’s analyze that for a moment and see if we can’t elaborate on this further.
Let’s say that we knew these Perch were extremely stressed out, so we begin intentionally dumping Prozac into the water supply. We do it in large quantities because these are some really stressed out fish. The contaminated water is now at, let’s say for the purpose of our hypothetical study, at 2,000 µg/L. Fish begin killing each other, aggression is high, there are serial killer Crappie everywhere! Naturally, this is problematic.
So we back off the dosage drastically in our next group, to say, 2 µg/L. The chemical is still a toxin but now all of a sudden the fish are getting along, even better than before. Breeding is up, socialization has increased, and awareness of predators and escape ability has shot up tenfold.
That is Hormesis in a nutshell.
Typically, one would assume that a higher concentration would chill our stressed Perch out more than would a lower dosage. That is after all how it works in humans. But as I said before, fishy physiology is far removed from our own. But Hormesis is just one explanation for the erratic behavior of these aquatic animals. More studies have to be put forward in order to definitively prove that is the force at work here.
But there is one thing we don’t need to study to know it’s bad. The disruption of the local ecology. The problem is, as we mentioned before, water treatment facilities aren’t equipped to handle the influx of drugs being pumped into their cleaning reservoirs. So how do we change that?
The answer may lie in Electrodeionization.
Filtering for Flounders
The current water treatment process is sound to say the least, I mean, we’ve only been doing it for over a hundred years this way. Water is pumped in from a source and heavy sediments are filtered out via screening processes. The water is treated with a few chemicals and sent through another filter, typically charcoal, where sediment is further filtered. The clean water is passed through a chlorine basin and sent through several levels of sand and gravel where more cleansing agents are applied. It’s then sent to a tank where it undergoes a process known as “Reverse Osmosis” and then shipped to your local water tower for home consumption.
Sounds good right?
The problem is that while the current practice removes the big particles and some of the smaller ones, it doesn’t remove the chemicals like the ones found in Ibuprofen and Oxazepram, which as we learned earlier, can lead to adverse effects on local fish populations.
The answer lies in Electrodeionization. General Electric is already well underway with its plans to equip facilities with the means to filter out these potentially harmful chemicals, but it’s a costly and slow moving process. It does work though, the question is, how?
Remember last year when we talked about Michael Faraday? No?! Well…refresh your memory then! (The Gold Nanoparticle Rush of ’09 (Cancer’s Worst Nightmare). What about his process of electrolysis? No!? Sheesh, head on over here and fix that! (Fossilizing Fossil Fuels for Fundamental Molecules). When Faraday discovered electrolysis he had unlocked one of the most useful technologies of our time.
Electrodeionization isn’t meant to replace current filtration methods, rather to supplement them. The phytochemicals from pharmaceutical runoff are so diminutive in size they could almost pass for a subatomic particle. These particles contain positive and negative charges which can thereby be affected by electrolysis. Electrodeionization aims to use electrolysis to remove bad ions from the water that have collected these particles by zapping them into non-existence.
But ions in and of themselves aren’t bad. They just contain a positive charge that allows the chemicals to stick to them more effectively. Once these dirty, dirty ions have been removed, clean electrolytes are pumped back into the water supply before heading off to storage so that the process can be replicated once more in the future.
The major factor here like we mentioned before is ‘cost’. Electrodeionization systems can cost hundreds of thousands (if not more) dollars. Most water treatment facilities can’t afford that, fortunately, pharmaceutical foundries are being equipped with these at rapid rates, so at least their effluent can be controlled. That just leaves the problem of us humans dropping our drawers and relieving ourselves of these chemicals to be dealt with.
Otherwise, we may have to shell out the shillings for Threadfin therapy.
- Ryan Sanders
Thanks for reading! If you would like to know more about any of the topics discussed today feel free to follow the links below! Be sure to follow us on Twitter @ToInf_InTheory and head over to Facebook to give the To Infinity and…In Theory page a big thumbs up! Happy learning everyone!
- Wiki on Electrodeionization
- Nature article on benefits of Anxiety drugs on fish
- Nature article on heightened aggression of exposed fish
- Wiki on Hormesis
- National Institute of Health paper on Hormesis
- Nature article on effects of phytochemicals on breeding response
- Nature article on antibacterial agents effects on river minnows
- Guidelines for Pharmaceutical Effluent as defined by the EPA
