The Invisible Pollutant: A New Project Aims to Remove Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals from Our Ocean

Project Redpol, a €2.8 million collaboration between the universities of Le Havre, Caen, Portsmouth and Brighton, as well as the Chichester Harbour Conservancy and the French company Toxem, looks to develop biotechnology products that can identify harmful chemical pollutants in the environment and remove them at the source.

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDC’s) are classified as substances that interfere with the normal functions of the endocrine (hormonal) system. They have become a global concern in recent years due to their adverse effects on not only human health, which includes cancerous tumors and birth defects, but also the impacts they are having on wildlife. “These compounds are found everywhere from pharmaceuticals, plastics, clothes, anti-stain technologies in frying pans, washing up liquid and pesticides,” said Professor Alex ford, deputy director at the Centre For Blue Governance, University of Portsmouth and collaborator on the project. Ford’s previous research has shown that amphipod shrimp are five times more likely to swim towards the light when exposed to the anti-depressant fluoxetine, making them more likely to be eaten by predators.

Image 1. Dog WhelkFemale dogwhelk (Nucella lapillus) has turned imposex and developed a penis. (Photo: Lise Tveiten, NIVA.)

However, scientists have only just begun to scratch the surface on how adverse these EDC’s can be. The role of Project Redpol is to allow networking and collaborative work between research institutions, industrial actors and territorial associations while implementing European regulations to protect people’s health, the environment, and economic activities in the European area. Project leader Professor Christophe Minier, University of Le Havre said: “The main idea for me was to build a project where we could both do some research but also deal with environmental regulations at the same time to help bring about changes.”

The EU has recently put in a framework for better regulation of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the environment but the appropriate tests are still not available. So, although these regulations are a positive step to take, if the relevant tools are not in place to identify what the endocrine disruptors are, then it is not going to be successful. “The problem is that the regulations do not make it compulsory for industry to fully search for endocrine-disrupting compounds in their products. They must check for toxicity and carcinogenicity for example, but not endocrine disruptors. So, we need to carry out research to prove that those compounds are being used, but also provide the tools for industry so that they can prove that their products are not dangerous.”

Project RedPol aims to deliver six innovative products which will help to address these issues.  Behavioural, bio-mechanical and biomolecular tests will be developed to enable the identification of EDC’s in the environment and facilitate their elimination at source.

“We are sure we can eventually produce six tools. They might not be fully available by the end of the project, but we hope that two could be placed on the market,” said Minier. “In France, one of the tools we are looking to improve are the tests that measure imposex in gastropods. The regulatory frameworks seem to have forgotten about invertebrates which is a big worry for me and so most of the tests will be focusing on those.”

Imposex, the presence of male sexual organs in female gastropods, is one of the most well-known examples of endocrine disruption in the natural world. Until the implementation of bans in the 1980s, tributyltin was a common ingredient in antifouling paint used on the underside of boats. Whilst it was an effective way of preventing unwanted marine life from sticking to your boat, tributyltin could also mimic natural hormones in marine snails, causing females to develop penises and preventing them from reproducing successfully. As a result, populations collapsed all over the world. What’s more concerning is that these effects were seen at a concentration as low as one nanogram per liter, which is the equivalent of a few grains of sugar in an Olympic sized swimming pool.

The work at the University of Portsmouth will have a different focus. “We have a problem at the moment where we don’t know all the genes involved in endocrine disruption. So, first of all, we are going to identify them in common crustacean species, including the brown shrimp and the common shore crab. From that, we should be able to pick out the genes associated with molting, reproduction, and the nervous system. Then we can go forward and look at their exposure to chemicals and measure not only gene expression but also behavior,” said Ford. He continued by saying “One of the major criticisms of lab-based behavioral studies is the question ‘will those behaviors be seen in the wild?’ So, we plan to measure the behavior of crabs in the lab and then also in the wild using tags, hopefully showing the same measurable changes in exposed individuals.”

The effects of EDC’s on the environment has been well known within the scientific community since the ’90s. In 1996, the European Commission sponsored an international meeting in the UK to address the potential impacts of endocrine disruption on the health of humans and wildlife. This led to the publication of ‘The Weybridge Report’, an integrated plan for future research and monitoring in the field. But there is a reason why public awareness of this issue has never really taken off in comparison to other pollutants such as plastic. The first problem surrounds visuality; it’s hard to get the public to care about something they can’t see. A picture of a plastic straw lodged in a turtle’s nose will invoke an emotional response and encourage people to act, it is much harder to do that with tiny compounds hidden to the naked eye. Ironically, EDC’s are part of the plastic problem themselves, yet they still do not get the publicity needed to help invoke change.

Encouraging lifestyle changes to reduce the environmental impact of household items is notoriously difficult. In the United Kingdom, the majority readily accepted a change to reduce the use of plastic grocery bags by reusing old bags or using alternative materials such as canvas. Yet, it still required government regulations, industry-wide changes and charges on new bags to create the societal shift. For chemicals, it is even more complicated. It is simply unrealistic to tell people to live their lives EDC free, because these chemicals are everywhere. Instead, we need to see changes in legislation and policy all over the world. Minier adds, “The only real way to be free of endocrine disruptors is to ban them. In my experience, in France along with other EU member states, it took nearly ten years just to ban Bisphenol-A. But the banning of other compounds should become more efficient in the future as the regulatory frameworks evolve.”

By Ellis Moloney, ECO Contributor

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