When a Fish is like a Canary

Most of us have heard the story of the canary in the coal mine. It goes something like this: before miners had the technology in place today to detect poisonous air as they dug deeper and deeper into the earth, miners carried a canary down with them. The thinking was that the canary would keel over before the men, an indication that the air was too poisonous to breathe. My guess is that the miners paid pretty close attention to the canary before it dropped dead.

Are we paying attention to the canaries in our environment?

Recently the Potomac River Conservancy released a report on the increasing rate of intersex among fish found in the Potomac and its various tributaries. The report prompted Virginia Representative Jim Moran to sponsor legislation aimed at reducing the presence of chemicals suspected of causing intersex in fish from entering our drinking water. As chairman of an important Congressional committee, Rep. Moran hopes to direct as much as $30 million to fixing this problem.

While fishers can certainly pull up a bunch of fish without this problem, the fact that the presence of intersex fish in what are supposed to be clean waters is increasing should worry all of us.

A lot of the blame can be placed right back at our own doorstep, or more accurately, our medicine cabinets. Improperly disposing of old medicine, vitamins and even in personal care products like shampoo.

More urgently, the supply of these chemicals also is coming from farm run-off resulting from pesticide use, or home lawn care pesticides. Importantly, the problem of household toxins entering our water is not confined to the Potomac and the Chesapeake watershed. An article posted to the National Geographic Society's blog notes that the problem is widespread throughout the U.S.

So the fish are our freshwater canaries. Paying attention to them will probably improve their health and lives and maybe our health and lives, too.