MOUNTLAKE TERRACE – A state Ecology Department study has found levels of PCBs and other stubborn pollutants in Lake Ballinger fish.
The levels are high enough for the lake to be listed as having impaired water quality but not high enough for health officials to issue warnings about eating fish caught there.
It’s not unusual for PCBs, once used as a coolant in electrical transformers and banned in 1979, to be found in fish or lake sediment. That’s because of their once-widespread use and because PCBs don’t easily break down to a simpler chemical compound, said Larry Altose, an Ecology Department spokesman.
“They don’t dissipate or break down, they remain in existence as PCBs,” Altose said. For this reason PCBs and two other pollutants found in fish taken from the lake are labeled as persistent pollutants, he said.
PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyls, a group of 209 compounds, were banned by the federal Environmental Protection Agency because of what it considers as their probable link to cancer in humans.
The state study listing Lake Ballinger as having impaired water quality was based on fish samples taken in 2006 and included analysis of largemouth bass and rainbow trout.
“It does set you back when you hear about pollutants that just persist,” said Dave Garland, a supervisor at the Ecology Department’s water quality program.
While the level of PCBs is not high enough to trigger an advisory on limiting consumption of fish caught there, water quality rules are more strict, he explained, so the lake’s quality is listed as impaired.
Mike Shaw, a storm water manager for the city of Mountlake Terrace, said Wednesday that he was unsure how often people fish at the lake.
The pollutants also aren’t high enough to prevent people from swimming in the lake when the weather’s better.
Based on current information, the only reason not to swim in the lake would be a toxic algae bloom, said Trisha Shoblom, a lake specialist for the state agency.
No cleanup of PCBs at Lake Ballinger is now being considered because the state is studying similar but more concentrated PCB pollution problems elsewhere to better understand how such cleanups could occur, Altose said.
The study also found PCBs in fish sampled from Silver Lake in Everett, but at far lower levels than at Lake Ballinger.
“Ballinger has one and a half times the average PCB in fish tissue than that (found) at Silver Lake,” Garland said.
Although not related to the state Ecology Department report, there is one standing recommendation from state health officials on consumption of largemouth and smallmouth bass caught in freshwater lakes, because of high levels of mercury found in the fish. Largemouth bass are one type of fish found at Lake Ballinger.
It recommends that women and children should eat no more than two meals a month of these types of fish.
Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486, salyer@heraldnet.com.
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