Drug waste harms fish

C onsumers who flush unwanted contraceptives down the drain have long been blamed for giving fish more than their fair share of sex organs. Drugs excreted by patients can also taint rivers, even after passing through wastewater-processing facilities. But evidence is accumulating that the effluent coming from pharmaceutical factories could also be carrying drugs into rivers. Many ecotoxicologists had assumed that water-quality standards, along with companies' desire to avoid wasting valuable pharmaceuticals , would minimize the extent of bioactive compounds released by factories into waste-water, and ultimately into rivers. A string of studies suggest otherwise. In 2009, for example, researchers 1,2 reported very high levels of pharmaceutical ingredients in treated effluent coming from a plant that processes wastewater from factories near Hyderabad, India. The following year, a similar discovery was made at two wastewater-treatment plants in New York, both of which received discharges from drug-production plants 3. Now, researchers have provided the first evidence of similar problems in Europe 4 , and have linked it to sex disruption in wild fish populations found in the Dore River in France. " People thought this could not happen in a country that has high environmental standards and good manufacturing practices, " says Patrick Phillips, head of the National Water-Quality Assessment Program at the US Geological Survey in Troy, New York, and lead author of the US study. " The evidence from the United States and now from France shows that this is not the case. " The discovery has prompted calls for more effective oversight of the industry. The United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and France do not have regulations limiting the concentrations of pharmaceuticals released into the aquatic environment in either municipal wastewater or in effluent from manufacturing facilities. " People think drug release is regulated, but its not, " says Joakim Larsson, a pharmacologist at the University of Gothen-burg in Sweden, and an author of one of the Indian studies 2. The French study investigated the health of wild gudgeon (Gobio gobio) populations in a river near a facility close to Vertolaye, owned by pharmaceutical multinational Sanofi, which produces steroid compounds. It was commissioned by the French environment ministry after anglers spotted abnormal fish in the area. Downstream from the factory, the researchers found that on average 60%, and in one case 80%, of the fish had both male and female sexual characteristics. Upstream of the effluent …