North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

Found this old CNN story in my archives ... it's relevant now given the sewage issue in Darwin
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(CNN) -- A number of aquatic and amphibian species are being exposed to small amounts of everything from Prozac to perfume to birth control pills that make their way into U.S. rivers and streams.

And scientists now have evidence that this "cocktail" of pharmaceuticals, in high enough quantities, can lead to problems that may be serious enough to prevent wildlife from reproducing. It's not yet clear how the buildup over time could affect the species.

In 2002, 80 percent of streams sampled by the U.S. Geological Survey showed evidence of drugs, hormones, steroids and personal care products such as soaps and perfumes. The U.S.G.S. tested 139 rivers in 30 states.

To give an idea how many drug remnants make their way into ponds, creeks and streams, after being passed through humans, sent into sewer systems and released from wastwater treatment plants:

More than 61 million prescriptions for anti-depressants were prescribed by U.S. doctors in 2001, according to the National Center for Health Statistics at the CDC. Because prescriptions like anti-depressants are for chronic conditions, patients often take them for months and years at a time, making them more likely to build up in wastewater

Researchers are working on several fronts to determine how big the problem is and just what short- and long-term ecological effects there might be on wildlife.

Bryan Brooks, a toxicologist at Baylor University in Texas, discovered evidence of Prozac, an anti-depressant, in the brains, livers, and muscles of bluegill, caught downstream from the Pecan Creek Water Reclamation Plant in Denton, Texas, near Dallas.

Anti-depressants have the same effect on fish that they do on people: they tend to relax them. That's not necessarily a good thing for the fish, though.