Bass Ackwards

The bass swimming near our nation’s capital are, increasingly, showing signs of gender confusion:

Abnormally developed fish, possessing both male and female characteristics, have been discovered in the Potomac River in the District and in tributaries across the region, federal scientists say — raising alarms that the river is tainted by pollution that drives hormone systems haywire.

The fish, smallmouth and largemouth bass, are naturally males but for some reason are developing immature eggs inside their sex organs. Their discovery at such widely spread sites, including one just upstream from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, seems to show that the Potomac’s problem with “intersex” fish extends far beyond the West Virginia stream where they were first found in 2003.

The cause of the abnormalities is unknown, but scientists suspect a class of waterborne contaminants that can confuse animals’ growth and reproductive systems. These pollutants are poorly understood, however, leaving many observers with questions about what the problems in fish mean for the Potomac and the millions of people who take their tap water from it.

It may be part of a larger, global problem:

Pollutants that mimic hormones have emerged as a worldwide concern in the past decade, blamed for problems in animals as diverse as alligators, minnows and polar bears. Although scientists say the research is in its infancy, they have identified a large array of pollutants that might affect animals, including human estrogen from processed sewage, animal estrogen from farm manure, some pesticides and additives to soap.

Is there danger to humans? This science is way over my head, and this paper may be a bit outdated (it was published in 2001), but here’s something to consider:

Changes in the sexual morphology of fish exposed to sewage effluent have led some scientists to conjecture that humans also live in a “sea of estrogens” and that the apparent increases in the incidence of certain reproductive conditions may be due to exposure to chemicals in the environment. The so called Sharpe-Skakkebaek hypothesis offered a possible common cause and toxicological mechanism for abnormalities in men and boys — that is, increased exposure to estrogen in utero may interfere with the multiplication of fetal Sertoli cells, resulting in hormonally mediated developmental effects and, after puberty, reduced quality of semen.

Someone save our precious bodily fluids!

Tags: Tags: science