Personal poison

"Each spit of toothpaste down the plughole can be a shot of poison for streams, new research hints¹. Chemicals from soaps, deodorants and contraceptives are reaching river water and cutting the number of different algae for fish and other animals to feed on.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) has found traces of pharmaceutical and personal-care products downstream of water-treatment plants in 139 rivers in some 30 states². Streams and rivers near farms and hospitals are more likely to be contaminated than others.
Waste water is cleaned before being re-introduced into the environment, but many facilities fail to remove all household chemicals and antibiotics. "We're evaluating the different types of treatments on these chemicals," says Herb Buxton, coordinator of the USGS Toxic Substances Hydrology Program.
But finding these antimicrobial compounds in the river system is just the beginning, Buxton explains. "The next step is to look at sensitive ecosystems and determine the ecological significance [of the pollution]."
Val Smith of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and his colleagues have done just that. "We asked 'how does a real-world community of algae respond to these compounds?'" he explains. Smith's team took algae samples from Cedar Creek, near Olathe, Kansas, 25 meters downstream of a plant that treats three million gallons of sludge each day.
In the lab, the antibiotic ciprofloxacin - often used to treat urinary-tract infections - and the antimicrobial triclosan - commonly found in acne soaps and antiseptic chopping-boards - eliminated one or two species of algae from the stream community, says Smith. “No organism is ever exposed to a single chemical in isolation”

Tergitol, a component of hair dyes and spermicides, had the most significant effects. It halved the number of algal types and reduced the overall volume of algae by more than three-quarters. This finding will feed into future USGS surveys, says Buxton: tergitol was not measured in the last one. Smith had to make a best guess at an environmentally reasonable concentration.
But individual compounds are just part of the story. "No organism is ever exposed to a single chemical in isolation," says Christian Daughton of the Environmental Protection Agency in Las Vegas. "The biggest unknown right now is interactions."

Yes who knows how this cocktail mix works, and how long will it take before we know the effect? It is long ago time to change our habits and to go for the green products!
More Here

  Who keeps track on your wastewaters..?

                                                                  

Fish on drugs and stuff

I read once that the sea that surrounds Tromsø had very high levels of antidepressants, especially during winter -well the season- depression are quite high in the winter- no surprise!
It seem like the fish can be affected too, like this article from nature.com informs about. This is from the US but I guess the fish in the North of Europe may be equally affected! Or where ever it may be a problem such as this describes. This one is about Prozac, a common antidepressant:

"To investigate the effects of fluoxetine, researchers have turned to a common US freshwater fish.. Normally, fathead minnows show a complex mating behavior, with males building the nests that females visit to lay their eggs. Once the eggs are laid and fertilized, the males tend to them by cleaning away any fungus or dead eggs.
But when fluoxetine is added to the water, all of this changes, said Rebecca Klaper, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Great Lakes Water Institute....
-Female fathead minnows seem to be unaffected by the chemical, but at concentrations of fluoxetine that are roughly comparable to the highest levels documented in fresh water, male minnows start to spend more time building their nests. When the dose is increased tenfold, the males "become obsessive, to the point they're ignoring the females", Klaper said.
When fluoxetine concentrations are increased yet again, fathead reproduction completely halts. "The males start killing the females," she said. Klaper also noted that if females are introduced a month after males are exposed to the chemical, the males no longer show this aggressive behavior, but the females still don't lay any eggs. "Something happens in that time," she said."

Read more: Fish-floundering

           

Although the citizens in

    Tromsø have a beautiful night-sky,

      they feel rather depressed during winter