Fish contaminated with PCBs
Editorial
July 9, 2008, 10:48PM
Hold the line
Heedless practices of Texas industry now poisoning sport fishing industry.
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
For generations of locals and visitors, fishing in Galveston Bay has meant deep immersion in nature's rhythms and the shapes, sounds, habits and nourishment of its wild creatures. This week, however, the State Department of Health plunged bay fishermen into a new reality: Human action has tainted the bay's biology, a circumstance they forget at their peril when they pull a fish out of the water.
The warning about two species of sport fish that are now inedible shows how hard it can be to repair environmental damage, years after the practices that caused it were stopped.
According to an unprecedented alert from the Texas Department of State Health Services, speckled trout and catfish from any part of Galveston Bay are deeply contaminated with two toxic compounds. After a two-year study, the agency found that both fish had high levels of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and dioxins.
The contaminant levels in those two species were so pervasive and dangerous that healthy adults should not eat more than eight ounces of either fish per month. Children, mothers who are breast-feeding and pregnant — or potentially pregnant — women should not eat even a morsel. PCBs and dioxins have been linked to cancer, liver failure and other diseases.
This week's advisory, involving fish caught anywhere in the bay, was a departure from past warnings against eating crabs and fish from the Houston Ship Channel or upper bay.
Restaurant diners have little need to fret. Retailers seldom serve speckled trout, and catfish dishes use farmed fish, often from Asia. But Galveston's sport fishing and party boat industry — whose clients catch fish to eat — could be hard-hit. Nonpaying fishermen, who simply know the bay as a serene place to catch their own dinner, also need to heed the advisory. Narrowing their meal choices are, right now, about the only two preventions the bay's devoted fisherman have.
Both PCBs and dioxins were banned in this country decades ago. (PCBs were created to cool and lubricate industrial equipment. Dioxins are a byproduct of industrial processes such as paper bleaching.) Even before their full level of toxicity was proved, the compounds tripped off environmental alarms because they didn't degrade.
A generation later, that alarm is justified. The compounds, some of which have been encapsulated in sediment, escape into the bay during dredging projects, or when fish carrying them in their bodies change habitats. Digging out the sludge where the toxins lie can release more of them into the water.
It will be years before these compounds disappear from the bay and its wildlife, said Elena Craft, a toxicologist from the Environmental Defense Fund. The good news is that other sport fish — red drum, black drum and flounder — have been found safe to eat. And the chemicals seem mostly located in tributaries and other specific sites.
The best response, Craft said, is to catch and release the two contaminated fish, eat low on the fish food chain (heavier fish carry more contaminants), and support policies that better screen the thousands of unexamined chemical compounds that still flood Texas waterways. Communing with nature, unfortunately, now requires constant awareness of civilization.
