Author: Sharon Oosthoek / Source: Science News for Students
Dirty water can leave a fish pooped.
Living downstream from a waste-treatment plant made fish work at least 30 percent harder to survive, a new study finds.Graham Scott is a biologist in Canada at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He led the new study. “Wastewater treatment plants are pretty good at taking stuff we put into water and treating it before it gets into our waterways,” he notes. “But not everything we flush down the toilet or down our drains gets taken out.”
For example, these plants were not designed to remove remnants of drugs. So when people pee out compounds left over after their bodies use and then break down medicines, those drugs can be released into the environment. These include the hormones in birth-control pills, the drugs used to treat depression and medicines to lower blood pressure.
Life-sustaining chemical reactions in an animal’s body (including ours) allow it to grow, move and reproduce. These reactions, taken together, are known as the creature’s metabolism. It takes a lot of energy to power these processes. Some studies have shown that even traces of just one drug can change an aquatic animal’s metabolism. It can make their bodies work harder, even when they are supposedly at rest.
“That’s energy they burn just to stay alive,” explains Scott. That also is energy no longer available to avoid predators, to find food and to mate. Instead, the animals use that extra energy to rid their bodies of the pollutants. Such chemicals can damage their cells and tissues or reprogram how their bodies respond to the environment. So their bodies work to…
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