NOW IT'S OPIOIDS AND ANTIDEPRESSANTS FOUND IN LOCAL FISH

 

The title of the story in today's K-W Record is "Researchers find traces of opioids in Ontario fish population". A few years back we were advised that birth control pills were the source of feminization of some fish in our local waters. Apparently even trace amounts of hormones getting through our wastewater treatment plants were adversely affecting fish species in the Grand River. Today it's more drugs both legal and illegal also damaging fish species. These include fentanyl, methadone and venlafaxine and as testing and research continue we will find more in the future. 

This is the big fraud, if you will, both with wastewater treatment and drinking water treatment. We don't know what we don't know. The numbers of untested chemicals in both treatment systems vastly outnumber those that are tested for. A prime example of this neglect was NDMA allegedly not being tested for in Elmira's drinking wells until 1989 despite a large chemical plant (Uniroyal Chemical) as well as Sulco, Varnicolor Chemical, Borg Textiles, Nutrite and more all in town. Both regional and provincial governments knew that NDMA was associated with rubber and rubber additives production as well as fertilizers, animal wastes (pig farms?) and chemical companies yet they conveniently let Elmira citizens unknowingly imbibe it for decades prior to sampling for it.

 Currently our authorities knowingly are allowing citizens to drink tap water with high sodium, nitrate and nitrite levels as well as low level TCE . Then there are all the toxic disinfection by-products such as THMs, HAAs, chloramines and chlorine. I wonder if locally either drinking water or wastewater is being tested for PFAs? Glyphosate concentrations, the active ingredient in Round Up herbicide are not fully known partly because of the highest Method Detection Limit in regional tap water of 25 parts per billion  

Current generations are the guinea pigs of modern day technologies and production. While the current crisis concerns water capacity we should also remember that constantly expanding populations also put enormous pressure on our surface waters which are used for their assimilative capacity (i.e. usually treated human sewage).  At the same time the more water we pull from our aquifers for expanding industry and populations the less is available for downgradient discharge into surface waters. 

Short term thinking (I.e. the growth mantra) is both unsustainable and eventually will lead to collapse. We are on that route now with limited time to reverse course.