By Lisa Loving

of The Skanner

September 19, 2001

 The Oregon Center for Environmental Health last week kicked off a new campaign to warn of the dangers of eating locally-caught fish from the Willamette River.

Community organizer Joe Keating, working with the center, said posters were put up along the river and in other nearby public places that detail the issues, along with brochures in English, Spanish, Russian and Vietnamese.

 Two of Portland’s most popular urban fishing spots, Swan Island lagoon and the boat ramp by the St. John’s Bridge, are right in the middle of one of the most polluted areas in the United States, the Portland Harbor “Superfund” site.

 Even though they may look totally normal, fish caught in the area are poisoned with chemicals that can cause human illness—from cancer in the elderly to brain damage among children.

 While signs there warn of the danger of sewer overflow along city fishing spots during very rainy weather, it has fallen to a non-profit organization to post signs there warning of the dangers of industrial chemicals.

 “I think what people do about this, is they don’t really absorb the information,” Keating said. “The reality is making people try to understand this is a real threat.”

 In the coming weeks, Keating said, the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group will go door to door in neighborhoods across the city to make sure targeted populations of “subsistence fishers” will get information on contaminated fish, their health effects and how to avoid them.

 Experts say the fish can hurt families even though they don’t look diseased. The poison is absorbed in the fish’s fatty tissues, where it concentrates in higher amounts than in the surrounding water.

 Most at risk from eating poison-contaminated fish are pregnant and nursing mothers, women of childbearing age, young children and babies, and all people who regularly eat fish from contaminated areas.

 PCBs, which are actually a variety of related chemicals, were invented to insulate electrical transformers and power poles. The substances essentially resemble heavy oil, and are thought to cause cancer in humans.

Along with mercury and pesticide residue, PCBs have their greatest impact in the developing bodies of babies and young children. Because little ones are still developing, the center argues even one-time exposure to some contaminants can have a permanent affect.

 For children, the side effects of eating chemically-contaminated fish, according to the EPA, are largely neurological. They include diminished exploratory behavior, difficulty completing complex tasks, and even decreased response to pain. Further effects are diminished ability to learn, hyperactivity, and mental disability.

 In adults, the biggest fear is cancer, but other dangers include weakened immune systems, liver damage, decreased fertility and reproduction problems.

 Toxic chemicals of particular concern to the Oregon Center for Environmental Health are the pesticides aldrin, dieldrin and DDT, mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). However, a variety of other cancer-causing chemicals have been found in Portland Harbor and all along the lower Willamette from West Linn to the mouth of the Columbia.

 Nutritionists still recommend fish as a healthy choice in a well-balanced diet, providing protein and less saturated fats than red meat. Of course, obtaining fish that is free of poison is key in good health.

 Some fish absorb—and pass onto their consumers—more toxics than others. Of special concern to the center are smallmouth bass, northern pikeminnow, sturgeon, large-scale sucker and carp.

 Four tips for safer fish eating, according to the center, include: catching the fish in less polluted spots, choosing leaner kinds of fish, preparing them in ways that minimize the toxics, and eating less fish.

 Preparing the fish to minimize the poison is more controversial. There is no cooking method that removes all toxic contaminants from fish—only ways to reduce the eater’s exposure.

 The center advises minimizing the danger by simply discarding the parts of the fish where most, but not all toxins are stored—the skin, bones and fatty parts along the back, sides and belly. Also, avoid frying the fish, because the PCBs contaminating its flesh will again become concentrated in the parts that are to be eaten.

 Throw away any leftover juices, water or grease, including water in which the fish was poached or boiled. Do not use them to make soup or stock.

“Younger” fish—smaller ones—are generally a better choice because they’ve had less time in the polluted water to store up poisons.

 The Superfund is a special program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency giving extra funds to finding, investigating and cleaning up the most polluted sites nationwide.

 Over the past 10 years, six sites in Oregon have been brought into the Superfund program, and half are either in North and Northeast Portland, or very close by.

 The first was Allied Plating, 8135 NE Martin Luther King Jr., Blvd. Emitting arsenic, metals and cyanide in large quantities, that site’s water waste drained into the Columbia Slough for decades. It was cleaned up and removed from the Superfund list in 1993.

 The Columbia Slough, however, remains on the EPA’s “advisories” list as polluted with high concentrations of PCBs, pesticides and dioxins. As a result, despite the fact that it is a beautiful nature spot, eating fish caught there is also discouraged.

 A second site, known as Gould Inc., is on the Willamette River in Northwest, exactly across from Portland Harbor, which is the third. With the newest site, EPA officials report so many “potential sources of contamination” they’ve listed its pollution as “of indeterminate source.”

 It’s clear, however, the agency’s investigators are looking at poisons in the river sediment as well as the water itself, meaning that crayfish diggers may be affected as well, although neither the center’s campaign nor the EPA list the bottom-feeding crustaceans.

  Don Francis, a Sierra Club river consultant and Willamette River expert, said, “I don’t think people are outraged enough.”

 Francis, who worked with the Black United Front to warn local anglers of the dangers of toxic pollution in the Columbia Slough a decade ago, said for many local residents fishing is a cultural tradition, even a right of passage.

 “The thing I’ve heard most from people is it isn’t enough to just say, don’t fish here—you have to tell people where they can fish.”

 According to Francis, “When polluters have polluted something, money will be collected from the polluters to try and compensate those who were damaged by it—a boat ramp, or a wetlands restoration project.

 “Maybe what the community wants is free charter buses to go up to the mountains and go fishing,” Francis said. “Right now lots of people walk down the street or take their bikes or spend 50 cents on gas—they don’t have the money to go up to the headwaters of the Clackamas River.”

For more information on the Oregon Center for Environmental Health, call 503-233-1510, or go to www.oregon-health.org.