Puget Sound Lined With Cocaine PPCP Contaminants

The Puget Sound, the waterway along the northwestern coast of Washington that borders Seattle, is thick with drug residue from treated wastewater, and the contaminants are showing up in salmon.

“Puget Sound salmon are on drugs — Prozac, Advil, Benadryl, Lipitor, even cocaine. Those drugs and dozens of others are showing up in the tissues of juvenile chinook, researchers have found, thanks to tainted wastewater discharge,” The Seattle Times  recently reported.

“The estuary waters near the outfalls of sewage-treatment plants, and effluent sampled at the plants, were cocktails of 81 drugs and personal-care products, with levels detected among the highest in the nation,” the report said.

A study published in the latest edition of the journal  Environmental Pollution  found a broad range of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in the Puget Sound. The concentrations found in effluent were found to be “higher than most concentrations reported for large wastewater treatment plants in the United States,” the study said. The study was notable in part because it focused on estuarine waters and whole-body fish, which are uncommon in the literature.

“Interestingly, 29 CEC analytes were detected in effluent and fish tissue, but not in estuarine waters, indicating a high potential for bioaccumulation for these compounds. Although concentrations of most detected analytes were present at relatively low concentrations, our analysis revealed that overall CEC inputs to each estuary amount to several kilograms of these compounds per day,” the study said.

Jim Meador, an environmental toxicologist at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle and lead author on the paper, spoke to  The Seattle Times .

“The concentrations in effluent were higher than we expected,” Meador said. “We analyzed samples for 150 compounds and we had 61 percent of them detected in effluent. So we know these are going into the estuaries.”

Even fish from the Nisqually estuary, where no treated effluent is released, turned up positive for contaminants. Leaky septic systems may be a source of these drugs.

“That was supposed to be our clean reference area,” Meador said. “You have to wonder what it is doing to the fish.”

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