http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=25&sid=903437
WASHINGTON - More and more abnormally developed fish -- fish with both male and female characteristics -- are showing up in the Potomac River, and not just in the South Branch, as WTOP reported in its Troubled Waters series.
Government scientists are finding the problem to be more widespread.
First the fish turned up in 2003 in West Virginia, then in 2004 in Western Maryland. Now, they've turned up in other Potomac River tributaries, including the Shenandoah River, and just upstream from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.
The discoveries are raising more alarms that pollution is to blame.
While scientists don't know exactly what causes the abnormalities, they suspect waterborne contaminants are to blame. They believe the Potomac watershed fish have been exposed to some endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
Those chemicals may be natural estrogens and they may be herbicides, pesticides and pharmaceuticals that can mimic estrogen.
Last fall researchers caught smallmouth bass in Virginia's Shenandoah River, Maryland's Monocacy River and Conococheague Creek and largemouth bass in the Potomac in D.C.
More than 80 percent of the male smallmouth bass caught were found to have eggs growing in them. All of the fish caught at four of seven survey sites were intersex fish, researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey say,
The four area water utilities that draw drinking water from the Potomac -- the Washington Aqueduct, Fairfax Water, the Frederick County authority and the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission -- have told The Washington Post they felt confident that drinking water is being filtered and cleaned well enough that it posed no problems to people. But Charles M. Murray of Fairfax Water wants more certainty that the water is being analyzed for the right things.
(Copyright 2006 by WTOP and The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
WASHINGTON - More and more abnormally developed fish -- fish with both male and female characteristics -- are showing up in the Potomac River, and not just in the South Branch, as WTOP reported in its Troubled Waters series.
Government scientists are finding the problem to be more widespread.
First the fish turned up in 2003 in West Virginia, then in 2004 in Western Maryland. Now, they've turned up in other Potomac River tributaries, including the Shenandoah River, and just upstream from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.
The discoveries are raising more alarms that pollution is to blame.
While scientists don't know exactly what causes the abnormalities, they suspect waterborne contaminants are to blame. They believe the Potomac watershed fish have been exposed to some endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
Those chemicals may be natural estrogens and they may be herbicides, pesticides and pharmaceuticals that can mimic estrogen.
Last fall researchers caught smallmouth bass in Virginia's Shenandoah River, Maryland's Monocacy River and Conococheague Creek and largemouth bass in the Potomac in D.C.
More than 80 percent of the male smallmouth bass caught were found to have eggs growing in them. All of the fish caught at four of seven survey sites were intersex fish, researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey say,
The four area water utilities that draw drinking water from the Potomac -- the Washington Aqueduct, Fairfax Water, the Frederick County authority and the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission -- have told The Washington Post they felt confident that drinking water is being filtered and cleaned well enough that it posed no problems to people. But Charles M. Murray of Fairfax Water wants more certainty that the water is being analyzed for the right things.
(Copyright 2006 by WTOP and The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
