First a Slew of Dead Fish, Now Sick People

The ailing fish began to appear in the spring, floating at the surface of dark, brackish waters--raw, red lesions pockmarking their silver skin.

At first, the outbreak of Pfisteria piscicida--a mysterious microscopic organism with a voracious ability to destroy fish populations--seemed restricted to just one stream.

But this month, the scope of the problem expanded dramatically--both in terms of geography and, more ominously, in its victims.

As increasing numbers of Pfisteria outbreaks caused Maryland officials to declare three Chesapeake Bay tributaries off limits to fishing, boating and swimming--and as officials in Virginia faced pressure to close at least one river in that state--doctors at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University medical schools reported the first evidence that Pfisteria may cause human illness.

The doctors, confirming the fears of watermen who had been reporting strange illnesses all year, said this past week after examining 35 patients that those with the heaviest exposure to contaminated waters showed disturbing signs of “a distinctive clinical syndrome characterized by chronic difficulties with learning and memory,” as well as by more temporary skin rashes and respiratory problems.

The symptoms were striking, said Dr. J. Glenn Morris Jr. of the University of Maryland, who led the team. One person whose livelihood was selling crabs told the doctors about driving in a car with a basket of crabs in the back seat and suddenly being unable to recall whether the point was to buy them or sell them. Longtime commercial fishermen, used to going out on their boats every day with a routine set of gear, found themselves out on the bay having forgotten to bring drinking water.

“These are young, vigorous people who otherwise seem to be healthy,” Morris said. “There is a real, objective problem.”

With those findings, what was initially just one more in a long, albeit unhappy, series of fish kills in Atlantic coastal waters has turned rapidly into a full-fledged health emergency.

“If it’s just degradation of the environment, it often doesn’t seem as serious to people. But human health makes people sit up and take notice,” said Michael McCabe, the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional administrator for the mid-Atlantic states. “People are definitely sitting up and taking notice now.”

State officials here and elsewhere in the region--seeking to reassure people that the Chesapeake, the nation’s largest and richest coastal estuary, remains safe for fishing and recreation--have begun to warn against “Pfisteria hysteria.” But the warnings have not stopped the outbreak from having an impact on two of the region’s largest industries: fishing and tourism.

Before all is over, officials say, another key industry may also feel the impact of Pfisteria: chickens.

On Friday, governors and other officials from six mid-Atlantic states and the federal government met here and pledged to cooperate in sharing information about Pfisteria and its health impacts.

Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening, who is basking in positive publicity from his quick action in closing Pfisteria-contaminated streams, also has appointed a special commission--to be headed by former Gov. Harry Hughes--to study what the state may need to do to avoid future outbreaks.

Publicly, all officials insist that the future course of action remains subject to study. “We have a problem. The problem appears to be stimulated by activities on the land. It may be urban. It may be rural. . . . Whatever the problem is, we will take action,” Glendening said Friday at a news conference.

Privately, however, officials concede that since the area of the Pfisteria outbreaks--Maryland’s rural Eastern Shore--is far from any urban center but in the midst of one of the country’s largest concentrations of poultry farms, the likely culprit is fairly clear.

Scientists, who identified Pfisteria as a new organism only in 1992, are not entirely sure what causes the one-celled creature to transform itself from a relatively benign spore lying on the bottom of brackish coastal streams into a toxic killer. Indeed, much of the organism’s life cycle remains mysterious. Researchers have also only just begun to isolate the toxins it uses to tear holes in the skins of fish, as well as those that seem to cause mental problems in other animals--and in people.

But one thing that is fairly well established is that the vast majority of Pfisteria outbreaks are associated with waterways that have been heavily polluted with excess nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorous, said Dr. JoAnn Burkholder, who heads the research team at North Carolina State University in Raleigh that first identified Pfisteria and traced its highly complex life cycle after a series of massive fish kills in that state’s coastal waters.

While nitrogen and phosphorous pollution can have many sources, from urban sewage systems to suburban lawns, the most prominent source is runoff from farms.

In North Carolina, the source is believed to have been large hog-growing operations. On the Delmarva Peninsula, which Maryland’s Eastern Shore shares with Delaware and a piece of Virginia, hogs are a relatively small business. But the peninsula is the home of about 625 million chickens, a population that has grown by roughly 20% in recent years.

The peninsula’s chicken industry is a prime example of a nationwide phenomenon: As agriculture has grown, it also has concentrated. With large food-processing businesses seeking to keep tight control over production standards and to minimize transportation costs, feedlots and animal farms have located in increasing numbers in close quarters.

In Maryland, officials estimate that the chicken industry, led by giant corporations such as Perdue, produces about $1.5 billion for the state’s economy. But the chickens produce something else: tens of millions of tons of droppings.

Typically, droppings and other forms of animal manure are disposed of by being used as fertilizer. In moderate doses, all parties agree, that is an excellent solution--reusing a waste product and reducing farmers’ needs for expensive chemical fertilizers.

But “when you’ve got such a huge concentration [of animals], with literally millions of tons of waste, the land is not going to be able to absorb it,” noted Chad Smith, a conservation policy analyst with American Rivers Inc., a Washington-based environmental group.

As EPA Administrator Carol Browner noted after Friday’s meeting here, that sort of pollution has become a national problem.

Areas of highly concentrated animal agriculture range from the dairy farms of the San Joaquin Valley to hog-farming operations in Iowa and North Carolina to the poultry barns here. In each place, the massive amounts of manure generated by highly concentrated farming have become a prime source of concern about water pollution.

“All across the country, where you have polluted runoff, we’re seeing a host of problems,” Browner said. The Pfisteria outbreak along the Chesapeake is a “clarion call to action.”

At least 40 states have submitted data to the EPA indicating that they have waterways suffering from runoff-related pollution, much of it from agriculture, noted Robbin Marks, senior program specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington. The state-by-state data indicate that “polluted runoff is the No. 1 unsolved problem” for clean water in the country, Marks said.

Under the federal Clean Water Act, so-called point sources of pollution--large factories, sewage treatment plants and the like--are extensively regulated. But “nonpoint sources” have proved far harder to control. In particular, the federal government has almost no regulatory authority over pollution from agriculture and has relied, instead, on voluntary efforts with major agricultural industries.

“We just don’t have the full range of tools at our disposal that we would otherwise be able to use,” said a senior EPA official.

Four years ago, the Clinton administration proposed amendments to the Clean Water Act to allow greater regulation of nonpoint pollution, but the move ran headlong into the Republican push for deregulation and went nowhere.

Now, environmental activists and Clinton administration officials believe, the presence of a toxic organism that appears to be making people ill in Washington’s backyard may substantially change the political equation.

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Toxic Outbreak

Maryland officials have ordered three waterways closed after an outbreak of a toxic microbe. Virginia officials have found evidence of the microbe in the Rappahannock River but have declined to close it.

Closed waterways

1. Chicamacomico River

2. Manokin River

3. Pocomoke River