Oct 31, 2007 12:06 am US/Eastern
Something Fishy Going On With Pittsburgh's Fish?
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ―
A local scientist says it's hard to tell the gender of many fish in
Pittsburgh 's three rivers and believes estrogen is to blame.
In his study, Dr. Conrad Dan Volz, from the
University of Pittsburgh 's Cancer Institute Center for Environmental Oncology, found it was difficult to identify the gender of 70 percent to 80 percent of the fish they caught in the rivers.
"The problem is we're developing intersex fish - they really don't have a gender - but they have properties of both genders," Volz said.
He blames it on chemicals that mimic estrogen, or pharmaceutical estrogens, which are discharged into our rivers after women urinate.
"We're talking about women who use birth control pills called EE2- and we're also talking about a large number of women who are on hormone replacement therapy," Volz explained.
So if it affects the fish, could it affect our drinking water?
"I'm not suggesting people quit drinking their tap water. Generally
Pittsburgh tap water is very high quality," he said.
But Volz says there might be a link between ingesting a lot of estrogen and some cancers, so he wonders about the future.
"I think it is a potential public health concern on the horizon," he said.
Volz says sewage treatment plants do a great job but they still don't get all estrogen out and they're not required to test for it.
It's not a problem in just
Pittsburgh 's rivers – it's been found all over the world.
There's already an advisory against eating catfish caught in the Monongahela and
Ohio rivers and a limit to what you eat from the Allegheny River.
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