By Sound News reporter Clea Hersperger

Perfectly normal-looking herring swim through Puget Sound waters, but they’re not really swimming as quickly as you’d expect. Some herring are suffering heart problems due to exposure to pollutants. But we wouldn’t expect this from measuring pollutants, because the levels are so low.

Adult Coho salmon return to our streams to spawn, but some die in convulsions before they can reproduce. The cause is most likely contaminants in storm water, but measurements don’t show individual toxics at levels that should cause these effects.

Why are there such effects when measurements don’t show a problem?

Water quality testing on Puget Sound. Identities of people unknown. Photo courtesy of flickr user kcooley.

Some suggest our current observation system is insufficient. A new system called TBiOS is being developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) and the Washington State Department of Fisheries and Wildlife (WDFW).

It aims to broaden the range of species and toxics studied, look at how toxics move from prey to predators through the food web, and even measure toxic exposure in humans. The intention is to take a holistic approach to get a better understanding of the Sound’s environmental health, to help protect it.

Still in its developing stage, the new system might face financial challenges.

Current system faces serious limitations

Today, only a limited amount of species is actually being monitored and studied, and the studies themselves are “more localized” and “short-term,” explained Lyndal Johnson, reproductive toxicologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center of NOAA.

Scientists don’t know how much is too much of new, emerging chemicals like pharmaceutical endocrine disruptors and flame retardant PBDEs. These are chemicals currently used in products that are turning up in the environment and causing effects, and their impacts are not fully understood.

“Emerging contaminants aren’t routinely measured and really aren’t regulated,” said Johnson. “We’ve seen effects at surprisingly low doses, and there may be mixtures that have unexpected effects we wouldn’t know about.”

According to the 2007-2009 Puget Sound Conservation and Recovery Plan, there are mixtures of “largely unstudied chemicals” including pharmaceuticals and personal care products or PPCPs, “that pass through humans and households, into and through sewage treatment plants, and ultimately into the water and the aquatic food web.”

“Fish residing in Puget Sound can receive unnatural endocrine exposure,” said Pacific Northwest National Laboratory toxicologist Irvin Schultz, which affects their sperm quality and the survival rate of embryos. Even at low levels of exposure, there are similar effects, “highlighting the potency of some of these estrogens.”

Copper is regulated in some cases, where polluters have to get water quality permits under the Clean Water Act that include regulations of the metal. However, there are cases where low levels of copper and other contaminants are not included in the standards for proper water quality, set by the EPA. There are limits to “the water quality criteria, and we really don’t know enough about it,” said Johnson.

Studies by University of Washington PhD student Jenyfer McIntyre have shown copper is a common pollutant in storm water that can have serious, negative impacts on exposed fish and their survival rates.

Safe water quality standards need to be updated, explained Lynda Mapes, a reporter for The Seattle Times: “that’s what you have to force companies to keep up to…if you set it higher, things have got to be cleaner, and that’s the point.” Criteria for what is “safe” are essential.

Finally, our current monitoring system has a limited scope. Contamination of the food web is not observed and measured, and should be, explained NOAA toxicologist Gina Ylitalo, because “you are what you eat.”

“The food web can be a serious source of exposure,” said Johnson, “even though you might not really see high level contaminants.”

Potential solutions in a new, integrated program

For this reason, TBiOS intends to enhance and improve the current system by increasing communication between the different agencies monitoring the Sound, and to ensure all the information is kept in one database. It will be a more integrated, collaborative effort to monitor Puget Sound.

The new program also broadens the range of species studied to look at food web connections. It will scrutinize new chemicals of concern including pharmaceuticals and flame-retardants, and will widen the range of monitoring to study both the individual fish or plant and also its population as a whole. It will also measure toxicant exposure in humans, whether from water or eating contaminated fish.

Still very much in the discussion stage, the new system probably won’t be implemented for another year or two. At this point, NOAA and WDFW are going to meet with the Puget Sound Partnership Toxics Loading Steering Committee, which oversees research and coordinates the funding for various toxics-related projects.

They will discuss how best to work with other agencies currently doing monitoring and with groups determining what species are most representative, to decide what are the best things to measure and monitor.

“There are certain projects that probably should be done first, to get certain information about some potential new species, before we really change the scope of the monitoring,” said Johnson, “and that will take some time.”

In the meantime, there will be continued monitoring of areas that are under-studied. New short-term studies will be done on potential food web connections and on different species of plants, fish and other marine life. Laboratory experiments comparing chemicals will help develop a method to study emerging contaminants.

“There might be certain things that come up that might be good ideas to fit into the current monitoring program sooner than that,” said Johnson.

The biggest challenge they face is not time, though, it’s financial.

“People may agree this is what we should do,” said Johnson, but “it might not be possible to add extra species and additional measurements of chemicals… there might not be enough funds available to implement the program the way we would like to.”

However, she added, “I think there’s a pretty good chance that the main points, the main components, would be incorporated.”

Protecting Puget Sound, reactively?

There have been suggestions for a more proactive approach directly tackling manufacturers and other sources of pollution, but this reactive monitoring system is necessary in order to be proactive.

“We have to be reactive before we can be proactive. We need to understand,” explained Schultz, in order “to ask for the proper change, or to have a good argument for those manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies.”

This new system can reveal the full impact of toxic chemicals and other pollutants, triggering tighter regulations, from the manufacturing sector to sewage treatment.

Consider the effects of monitoring by the fisheries service, which found that three commonly used pesticides are threatening salmon and steelhead. According to a Seattle Times article, these findings have triggered an environmental lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act, are pushing the EPA to put restrictions on product labels, and are pressuring the State Department to enforce new restrictions on farmlands and even golf courses.

Monitoring is the first step to reducing toxics in Puget Sound.