WA State Gov. Warns On Duwamish River Fish - Extremely High PCB Levels

[hatrack]

Don't eat the fish in the lower Duwamish River. That was the simple message yesterday from the state Department of Health, after new tests showed the fish had toxic PCB levels much higher than found in earlier tests. But delivering the message to the river's fishermen won't be so straightforward. Many are part of immigrant communities with language or cultural barriers to government outreach. Others are homeless.

"You're going to have a hard time finding the people who are taking the fish," said B.J. Cummings, coordinator of the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, a collection of community groups monitoring federal Superfund cleanup of the river, which runs through the industrial heart of South Seattle. "There are absolutely people who are eating fish from the river. Some of them every day."

The latest tests, done last fall by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), found PCB levels well above safety thresholds, an average 716 parts per billion in the skinless fillet of an English sole, for example. Comparable tests between 1992 and 1999 found an average 267 parts per billion. An adult can safely eat only 8 ounces of fish a month with PCB levels of about 200 parts per billion, the Health Department says. PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls, were banned in the 1970s after decades of industrial use. Exposure to high levels is linked to developmental problems in children and is a probable cause of cancer.

It's not clear why the latest tests showed higher pollution levels. It could simply be because the testing was more extensive this time. Or it could be that sediment stirred up by recent cleanup efforts has caused a temporary spike in contaminants, said Sheila Eckman, a manager for the EPA regional office. The new advisory includes perch, flounder, English sole and crab. It doesn't cover salmon, because the fish don't spend their entire lives in or near the Duwamish. There already has been a warning against eating Duwamish shellfish other than crab."

EDIT

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002419662_duwamish04m.html

[whistle]

1. And the source of the PCBs is .....???

...well, let see in 1992 and 1999 when it was 267 parts be billion, what industries that flush PCBs into the environment weren't there then, but are there now? Come on Washington state, think hard.....

[NNadir]

2. On September 13, 1974, a transformer containing 255 gallons of 100% PCB

was dropped into the river, cracking. Over 100 gallons were released to the waterway.

This may not sound like much, until you account for the very low solubility of PCB and related chlorocarbons. Here is a table giving the total solubility for various chlorinated biphenyls:

http://wlapwww.gov.bc.ca/wat/wq/BCguidelines/pcbs/pcbs-02.htm

According to this site, http://www.chem.unep.ch/pops/POPs_Inc/proceedings/bangkok/FIEDLER1.html the density of PCB's range between 1.182-1.566 g/ml.

If we take the density value as 1.2 and recall that a gallon contains 3785.6 ml, and we take a PCB with a solubility of 10 micrograms per ml, we see that 1 gallon of PCB, weighing about 4.5 kg, is enough to saturate 450 million liters of water (120 million gallons). However, it is not this simple. Some of the PCB is undoubtedly extracted into hydrophobic pockets in the environment, some of which are represented by oily plants and oily plankton. Thus it is not immediately released into the flowing water but can persist for long periods of time, and be concentrated by the food chain.

(A similar situation is obtained for tetrachloroetheylene (TCE), aka dry cleaning fluid. A few gallons can contaminate a large volume of water for years. As TCE was widely used to degrease autoparts in gas stations, about 30% of the groundwater in the United States contains measurable concentrations. The well at my home frequently exceeds the action level, about 1 ppb. I have remediated it with a carbon filter which happily, also removes radon.)

It also appears that the PCB contamination was not limited to this single event, though the event was certainly regarded important enough to require years of clean up efforts.

Apparently a local company was collecting waste oil from City Light, a local power company and processing it near the river. Any waste oil from a power company was likely to contain PCB's for the simple reason that the most widespread use for PCB's was in transformers. (There are many, many existing transformers distributed around the country that still have PCB's in them: Transformers usually last a long time.)

This situation is described in this link: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/232345_duwamish13.html?searchpagefrom=1&searchdiff=0

The Duwamish river is considered a superfund site.

[One_Life_To_Give]

3. But PCB's get you Boys

So guys eat up. There was a study that showed about a 5% increase in the probability of Fathering Boys if you have a high blood level of PCB's.