14 DAY TRIAL // Advertising explains us the benefits of fish consume, omitting to say that fishes act like sponges that absorb any toxin from their environment. In the industrialized world, fish caught from streams, rivers and lakes have risky mercury amounts which can damage the nerve cells from the brain.
A new research found that fish from waters running in industrialized areas may also carry high levels of chemicals mimicking female sex hormones that trigger breast cancer. "We need to pay attention to chemicals that are estrogenic in nature, because they find their way back into the water we all use." said co-author Conrad Volz, from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute's Center for Environmental Ecology. Volz's team sampled 21 catfish and six white bass caught by local anglers in five places: a relatively uncontaminated site 36 miles (58 km) upstream from Pittsburgh on the Allegheny River, an industrial location on the Monongahela River, an Allegheny site downstream from a number of industries that dump toxic compounds and the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, where Pittsburgh spills its treated sewage. "This is the largest concentration of combined sewer outflows in the U.S.," Volz notes.
Several market fish were used as controls. An extract of skin, flesh and fat from the fishes was exposed to a breast cancer cell line (MCF-7). "We used this cell line because it has estrogen receptors in it, meaning that if estrogens are present it causes this cell line to proliferate. If you put something on it and it grows, then it must be stimulating the estrogen receptor." said Volz. The extract from two basses and five catfishes provoked breast cancer cells growth.
Fish from the industrial section of the Monongahela River presented the highest contaminants' level. "The Monongahela River area is the area in Pittsburgh that was the site of most of the steel production over the last 100 years. That area is still an industrial beehive." said Volz. The broadest contamination was observed in the waters of the sewer outflows from Pittsburgh; 3 out of 4 catfish captured here boomed the breast cancer cells.
"Sewage might be more responsible for putting estrogenic chemicals in the water than the industries alone. All of the hormone replacement products that women use go down the drain, along with birth control pills, antibacterial soaps, and many of the plastics we use, like Bisphenol A, have such effects." said Volz. The effect of estrogen-mimicking chemicals present in the fish was clear: the sex of nine of the fish could not be determined.
"Increased estrogenic active substances in the water are changing males so that they are indistinguishable from females. There are eggs in male gonads as well as males are secreting a yolk sac protein. Males aren't supposed to be making egg stuff." said Volz. But the store-bought white bass induced breast cancer cells growth like the river ones. These individuals were coming from Lake Erie.
"These fish, again, were in waters that were seeing industrial waste as well as possible combined sewer outflows. This isn't just happening in Pittsburgh, this is happening everywhere in the industrialized world." signaled Volz.
The researchers will try to find if industrial waste, sewage or agricultural runoff (or all three) are behind the issue. They also advise people to eliminate the fat out of the fish when cooking it, as the estrogen mimicking-chemicals are soluble in the fats where they accumulate. "If you broil fish and let the fats drip out that will take most of the contaminants out," explained Volz, even if the method does not eliminate completely the toxic chemicals. "What our study does show us is that there is exposure potential to vast populations that use water from our rivers as their drinking water supply."