This Page About Fishing: Public health expert examining catches for heavy metals

Fishing: Public health expert examining catches for heavy metals

It was a first for veteran anglers at one of the Allegheny River's hottest spots. They were being asked to donate their fishing to science.

On a recent Saturday, a cadre of fishermen at the Highland Park Dam filled buckets with white bass and channel catfish so that Dan Volz, a public health expert, can tell them someday soon whether what they catch is loaded with heavy metals and estrogen-like compounds, or chemicals that mimic the effect of estrogen, a hormone produced by the body and needed for the development and growth of female sex organs.

"It's cool," said Rafiq Wilks of Homewood as he reeled in one white bass after another and handed them to Volz. "If it helps shed some light, why not?"

While there are consumption advisories relating to mercury, PCBs and chlordane on all Pennsylvania fisheries, fish may contain other heavy metals from the region's industrial past. They may also contain hundreds of chemicals from farmlands and new construction that few people are aware of, said Volz of West Deer and the scientific director of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health.

Volz is interested in knowing how much of a health risk fishing pose for the people who eat them, and said fishing may be the best indicators as to whether estrogen-like compounds in the water pose a health threat. "Fishing are like canaries in the coal mine," he said.

Volz is focusing on white bass and channel catfish -- species in the middle of the food chain -- because he needs 100 fish for the study and figured they'd be easier to come by in big numbers than walleye and smallmouth bass. He was well on his way to that amount, given the number of bent rods that lined the railing of "the wall," a perch above the dam where Jay Hughes and Howard Harvard have made some legendary catches in the past 20 years, though never for the sake of research.

"Anything that will help is fine with me. The sewage that comes out of that pipe is unbelievable," said Harvard, with a nod toward an outflow from Guyasuta Run, which carries wastewater from Fox Chapel to the river near the dam. "You got to wonder what runs in here."

Volz has his suspicions. "One substance we'll be looking for is pthalates, which are found in soaps, paints and glues used in the construction industry," he said. "They're like estrogen in their effect on living systems. An excess amount is like taking birth control pills, and could potentially cause an increase in breast cancer. They are also indicated in neuro-developmental problems."

In rivers, they could be spawning a generation of "girlie fish," Volz said. "Studies on the Potomac show a lot of fish are developing female characteristics, like undeveloped eggs in the testes."

Other chemicals with estrogen-like activity include PCBs, a carcinogen once used in electrical systems, pesticides such as DDT and anti-microbial agents, many containing arsenic, used on farms to control bacteria.

"When it rains, these compounds from farms, malls and housing developments get released into surface water -- and pretty quickly where you have a lot of pavement," Volz said.

He will be sampling fish for metals left behind by steel mills and coke plants. "We had mills up and down the Mon dispersing metal dusts that were contaminants ... coke ovens that produced large volumes of benzene and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons," Volz said.

Volz has received more than 60 fish so far from anglers on the Ohio, Monongahela and Allegheny rivers. He is measuring them, documenting where they were caught, filleting them and then freezing the meat, which eventually will be pulverized in a high-tech blender and tested for toxins. He is archiving the fishes' heart, liver, kidney and sex organs. "We're public health folks, so we're not concerned with the health of the fishing," he said. "We're interested in the health of the fishermen."

"You get a little nervous when you hear the warnings on mercury, iron and PCBs," said Harvard, who lives in Brookline and once worked in a steel mill. "I don't know how harmful they are, but I eat just the game fish -- the walleye and the crappie."

Volz said all species, including game fish, accumulate chemicals through their skin and their gills, as well as through their diet, and larger species are more likely to contain higher quantities.

"The common belief that bottom dwellers are more polluted isn't necessarily true," said Volz, who will spend much of this winter interviewing urban anglers about their fish consumption habits. "There's a whole subset of people who live on river-caught fish. We want to know what they eat and how they clean and cook their fish."

He also expects to spend time in the lab. If fish samples show evidence of estrogen-like compounds, Volz will apply extracts to breast cancer cells to see if they cause them to proliferate, he said. He hopes his findings will also prompt improvements in water quality.

"It's got to be terrible down there," said angler Paul Caruso of Homer City as he reeled up a 24-inch channel cat for Volz's study. "But as long as they bite, I don't care." Continue to learn more about fishing, please visit Post Gazette.

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