Copyright 1998 Stuart News Company
The Stuart News/Port St. Lucie News (Stuart,FL)
March 30, 1998, Monday
SECTION: Local; Pg. C1
LENGTH: 1203 words
HEADLINE: STATES JOIN FORCES IN FISH PROBE
BYLINE: Debi Pelletier of the News staff
BODY:
Troubled Waters
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working
to gather information on algae implicated in fish kills. "A
fish school comes by and all of a sudden you have a toxic bloom.
We need to be working on what triggers toxicity in this organism."
-Karen Steidinger of Marine Research Institute
STUART - Florida and five other states, along with the federal
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are working together
to collect data on how microorganisms implicated in recent fish
kills on the Treasure Coast might affect human health.
Scientists expect another outbreak of fish deaths when the
rainy season begins in June, and they hope to learn more about
the algae Pfiesteria piscicida and its relatives. One of them,
Cryptoperidiniopsis, has been singled out as the culprit behind
the lesion-riddled fish found in recent weeks in the St. Lucie
River and Indian River Lagoon.
"What we're trying to do is improve the size of the studies
and get some baseline data prior to people being exposed to Pfiesteria,"
said the CDC's Dr. Michael McGeehin.
The CDC wants to test people who have been exposed to determine
whether memory and reasoning are affected, he said.
So far, symptoms of exposure to Pfiesteria and its cousins
include skin rashes, upper respiratory difficulties and memory
loss. But blisters in or on the mouth, accompanied by a fever,
do not follow the pattern reported from Pfiesteria outbreaks elsewhere,
McGeehin said.
The blister symptoms were reported to the Martin County Health
Department last week by a man who developed a large sore on his
lip after catching diseased mullet in the Indian River.
"We know to look for memory loss, confusion and some other
neurocognitive effects," McGeehin said from Atlanta on Friday.
Those symptoms were found in a study of 13 watermen after a
massive fish kill in the Chesapeake Bay area.
But McGeehin said the study was too small to "answer many
questions" and that it was based on people's recollections
after the event.
The CDC's study is funded on a year-to-year basis by Congress.
McGeehin said he hopes the project will continue for three to
five years.
"I don't know whether Congress will appropriate money
for us for all that period of time, but certainly I don't think
the answers are going to be arrived at in just one year,"
he said.
A key question is how many kinds of organisms such as Pfiesteria
exist.
"I have no earthly idea, and I don't think anybody else
does, either," McGeehin said. "I think it just depends
on the length of time we wait before they isolate all of them."
Karen Steidinger of the Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg
said she has found 10 Pfiesteria-complex organisms in Florida,
two of which can be toxic to fish. A third toxic cousin, Pfiesteria
piscicida, has not been found in Florida.
The organisms are dinoflagellates, a class of algae that is
responsible for the red tides that occasionally menace the state's
marine life. They are found in brackish water with salinity of
about 15 parts per thousand but can tolerate higher levels. They
consume other algae and bacteria instead of relying on photosynthesis
for their food.
And they need fish to become toxic.
"These things are out there," Steidinger said. "A
fish school comes by and all of a sudden you have a toxic bloom.
We need to be working on what triggers toxicity in this organism."
Steidinger said there are more than 85 toxic microalgae in
the world, and more than 60 of them are dinoflagellates, many
of which produce toxins. That's why it's important to isolate
the toxins in Pfiesteria and Cryptoperidiniopsis, she said. The
agents produced by the algae might be fatal to fish but not to
humans.
Joann Burkholder, an associate professor of botany at North
Carolina State University, said Cryptoperidiniopsis looks and
acts a lot like piscicida, in which she has identified 24 life
cycle stages. She said Cryptoperidiniopsis has "a very similar
life cycle, lots of very similar-looking stages" and attacks
fish in similar ways.
She thinks it has similar ramifications for human health.
Burkholder was exposed to Pfiesteria piscicida about five years
ago. Since then, she has suffered 10 bouts of pneumonia and has
problems with her memory and ability to learn, she said. Her research
associate, Howard Glasgow, was the hardest hit, she said.
"He recovered his ability to remember and learn within
about three months," Burkholder said. "Howard and I
both know there's little things about my own ability to remember
and so forth, and his as well, that we compensate for, but we
test within normal range."
Scientists at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
in Charleston, S.C., said they're close to isolating the toxins
in piscicida and have begun tests with rats. Dr. John Ramsdell,
the chief of the coastal research branch, acknowledged it will
be some time before the same is done with Cryptoperidiniopsis.
"What we want to do is to be able to determine whether
or not we can measure the toxin in the body fluids of animals
so we'll be able to confirm exposure in humans," Ramsdell
said.
Ramsdell and his associates used a gene-splicing technique to develop a
biological bloodhound that can sniff out suspected toxins in the bloodstream.
Those bloodhounds, called reporter-gene assays, have been successful in the
laboratory, but a real-world test is needed, Ramsdell said.
The only way to find out, he said, is by trying it during an
outbreak.
"That's what we're planning to do this season, and we're
very well integrated with a variety of agencies, state and federal,
to put this into action this year and to see how it performs,"
he said.
His colleague, chemist Pete Moeller, said he was "very
close" to isolating and identifying one of the Pfiesteria
toxins, but he was not ready to discuss his findings.
"We have elected not to go public with that until it's
complete," Moeller said from his lab. "It's one thing
for me to isolate a toxic substance from an algae, but it's another
to go the next step, which has to be done. And that's to literally
prove that this is the toxin that's causing the damage."
The health effects reported in Maryland have not been observed
in Florida, but state and county health officials aren't taking
chances. Martin County health officials will be out Tuesday to
take water samples from popular swimming spots, said Valerie Gryniuk,
the county's public health administrator.
And the department wants to start cataloging information from
people who think they might have been exposed to something in
the water.
Gryniuk said they'll want to know what the symptoms were, "if they were fishing in any particular place, if they were swimming in water, where and when they were swimming," and whether they sought treatment by a physician.
But the county health department hasn't received information from the CDC or state health officials about what symptoms to look for, Gryniuk said.
"I think if we're running a health department down here,
they should share that information," she said. "We're
not supposed to be isolated. We're supposed to be part of the
bigger picture."
LOAD-DATE: April 2, 1998