New findings on emerging contaminants(ngs on food packaging derived from compo...),Health

Date:2/16/2008

ngs on food packaging derived from compounds known as perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs, are tough. But the same toughness that helps PFCs resist spills and grease also makes them resistant to breaking down in the environment. This means that PFCs can easily contaminate bodies of water and be ingested by wildlife.

Jennifer Keller of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, S.C., and her colleagues have monitored PFCs in loggerhead sea turtles along the U.S. East Coast to study the effects of the pollutants on these marine animals. Loggerhead turtles accumulate PFCs in their tissues because they eat filter feeders such as mussels that remove contaminants from the water.

Kellers team found that turtles with high concentrations of PFCs showed signs of liver damage and were immunocompromised. Keller says, Endangered sea turtles run a gauntlet of stresses in the oceans, and chronic exposure to contaminants may impair their defenses against disease or their ability to reproduce. Because reptiles and humans have similar immune systems, Keller says that we also may be at risk for the same health problems as the loggerheads from exposure to PFCs.

*Gender Bending can Impact Aquatic Food Webs*

Chemicals are ending up in aquatic ecosystems in part because many municipal wastewater treatment plants do not filter out chemicals completely, including the estrogen women excrete in their urine after taking birth control medications. Karen Kidd of the University of New Brunswick is testing the effects of estrogen on aquatic life in a laboratory a bit larger than usuala lake in northwestern Ontario.

After Kidd and her colleagues with Fisheries and Oceans Canada added estrogen to the lake in 2001, male fish in this lake started producing eggs or egg proteins and female fish produced up to 115 times more estrogen than normal. During the next summer, the fathead minnow,
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Contact: Matthew Wright mwright@seaweb.org 617-835-9395 SeaWeb Source:Eurekalert

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