If you’re still on the fence about whether or not we need to start taking care of the environment, maybe this will convince you.

This month alone, a new study revealed that the Cape Floral Kingdom is a “hot spot for extinction”. To add to the Cape environmental crisis, dead whales are also becoming tangled in ropes on our beaches.

Last year, they discovered toxic coolant on Sea Point beach, and earlier this year, we reported that Cape Town flushes several million litres of essentially raw sewage into the sea every day through the City’s marine outfalls at Green Point, Camps Bay, and Hout Bay.

That sewage also contains chemicals and pharmaceuticals, which is why it shouldn’t come as a surprise that our marine life is heavily contaminated.

Scientists from the University of the Western Cape’s chemistry department have found that fish caught by small scale commercial fishers in Kalk Bay are contaminated by antibiotics, painkillers, antiretrovirals, disinfectants, and industrial chemicals, reports GroundUp.

Species tested include snoek, bonita, hottentot (Cape bream), and panga, obtained from random daily commercial catches sold at Kalk Bay harbour in late 2017.

In their peer-reviewed paper, Senior Professor Leslie Petrik at the University of Western Cape’s Chemistry Department, and Cecilia Y. Ojemaye tested for 15 different chemical compounds in the fish fillets, gills, liver, and intestines.

These include the analgesic/anti-inflammatories Diclofenac and Acetaminophen, the antiepileptic drug Carbamazepine, the antibiotic Sulfamethoxazole, the disinfectant Triclosan, as well as various industrial chemicals found in pesticides, flame retardants, and personal care products. These were all present in various parts of the fish tested.

The industrial chemicals all showed “high risk” in the fillet parts of the fish, which is the parts that humans traditionally consume.

The contamination can be traced back to the marine outfalls at Green Point, Camps Bay and Hout Bay mentioned earlier.

The only treatment at these pump stations – confirmed by City authorities – is that the raw sewage is pumped through a grid to remove solids such as tampons and grit. The sewage pumped out at Greenpoint includes waste from the Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital, as well as all medical and light industrial facilities between Salt River and Bantry Bay.

While there are no marine outfalls in False Bay, both the Strandfontein and Zandvliet waste water treatment works discharge into the bay. The treated water is supposed to meet minimum standards for the presence of microbial bacteria such as E.coli and Enterococcus, which are indicator organisms for the presence of other microbes.

Historically, coastal water quality tests – the results of which used to be presented along with inland water quality data at subcouncil meetings twice a year until 2013 – taken near these outlets sometimes failed the minimum guidelines. This indicates these sewage works have not always treated the effluent to the necessary standards, or that storm water containing high levels of sewage is running out to sea.

The City has said that they do not test for chemical compounds such as those indicated in Ojemaye and Petrik’s study.

The result is poisoned fish flesh coupled with very little information on the quality of the waters surrounding the Cape.

You can read more about the rates of water pollution here.

We need to do better.

[source:groundup]