Pharmaceuticals in the Hudson Pose a Threat to Aquatic Life

According to the co-author of a study measuring trace pharmaceuticals in the Hudson River, fish and other forms of aquatic life may be experiencing harm from the contaminants, which are more widespread than previously believed.

Biologist Andrew Juhl of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University said that in 2016, his research team collected samples from 72 spots on the river — from New York City to Albany. The samples contained 16 types of compounds, from antibiotics and acetaminophen to drugs for treating high blood pressure, high cholesterol, epilepsy, ulcers, and heartburn.

"We don't know what the effects might be," he said, adding that the contaminants probably don't pose a direct threat to people who swim, eat fish in moderate amounts, or even get their drinking water from the Hudson — more than 100,000 residents of the Upper Hudson Valley. But it's not good news if you're a fish.

"There's a difference between drinking treated drinking water and living your life marinated in a soup of pharmaceuticals and that's what the aquatic organisms are facing," he said. 

Juhl explained that pharmaceutical substances survive well in water, allowing them to float far and wide in the estuary. "They're traveling through the system," he said. "They last long enough that they get transported by the currents and tides." That makes them more widespread than PCBs and fecal bacteria, but less harmful. Concentrations of PCBs are normally found near former industrial sites, and levels of bacteria most often rise near sewage treatment plants after discharges into the river.
 
Most of the pharmaceutical residue reaches the river through human wastewater. But treatment plants on the Hudson are not equipped with technologies, such as ultraviolet light, that could be used to neutralize the compounds. 

"So far, neither the EPA nor other agencies set standards for the presence of pharmaceuticals in water, largely because no one is sure what levels are safe or not," the Observatory said in a press release attached to the study.