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Pollutants leaving the Vltava River

Salmon and trout are making a comeback as estrogen levels decrease

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
April 25th, 2007 issue

As of the late 1980s, the Czech Republic had some of Europe’s most polluted water coursing through its cities. Rivers were sometimes used as industrial dumps, and the chemicals that laced them were starting to turn up in people.

“In Eastern Europe, the government at that time was not taking into account these warnings,” said Jana Hajšlová, a professor at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague 6.
But now signs look positive that the country has largely cleaned its rivers and streams.  Fish that couldn’t survive in the Vltava a decade ago, such as salmon and trout, are making a comeback and overall biodiversity is improving, Hajšlová said.
“Compared to the end of the ’80s, it’s absolutely better,” she said.
During communism, the Czech Republic lagged far behind Western Europe and the United States in terms of protecting its wetlands.  Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a compound used in paints, plastics and a host of other items, had been banned in the United States since the late 1970s but remained legal here for another decade. Making matters worse, PCBs were not handled carefully but dumped into rivers, according to Hajšlová.
“The [Vltava] river was smelly at that time, and it was a dangerous stream,” she said.
Some of the pressure on the country to clean up its act came from surrounding countries. For example, the Vltava turns into the Moldau in Germany, which forged an agreement with the Czech Republic to keep its waters clean.
PCBs are estrogenlike compounds that disrupt natural hormone production and may be responsible for heightened levels of breast and testicular cancer in the Czech Republic.  Unlike the estrogens used in contraceptives and the natural estrogen that women produce, PCBs are persistent organic chemicals, meaning they do not degrade easily.
Instead, PCBs and similar long-lasting chemical compounds such as brominated flame retardants (BFRs), which are used in everything from couches to computers, settle into the sediment underneath rivers. After they mix with the sediment, they cannot be easily removed.
Fish are particularly sensitive to these contaminants and are a good biomarker of the health of the river. Downstream of wastewater treatment plants, altered estrogen levels can even cause male fish to develop female sex organs, creating hermaphrodite fish.
On the other hand, the amounts of natural estrogen produced by women and those found in contraceptives, are a negligible part of all the types of estrogen (and estrogenlike chemicals) in the country’s water supplies, according to Hajšlová. Tomáš Pačes of the Czech Geological Survey agrees. His studies show that, although concentrations of natural estrogen and estrogen from oral contraceptives are four times higher around Prague than at other points of the Vltava, the amounts are barely detectable. And those types of estrogens do not accumulate in significant amounts in fish, Hajšlová said.
Though Jakub Kašpar of the Environment Ministry said drinking-water treatment plants cannot eliminate all steroids (such as estrogens) and pharmaceuticals, water treatment methods ensure that very little actually makes its way into drinking water, according to Hajšlová. “It’s not an issue of high concern,” she said.
 

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com


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