Artificial fragrance in shampoos and soaps damages aquatic wildlife downstream

• Those fragrant soaps and shampoos we casually rinse down the drain may be causing long-term damage to aquatic wildlife downstream by interfering with the animals' natural ability to eliminate toxins from their system, according to a new Stanford University study published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
• "Synthetic musks can be easily produced and are very cheap," said Stanford postdoctoral fellow Till Luckenbach, lead author of the study.
• "They get into the environment through sewers and drains, but wastewater treatment plants are not equipped to handle them."
• In their study, Luckenbach and Stanford biologist David Epel tested six synthetic musk compounds widely used by industry.
• Their goal was to determine if these artificial fragrances affected the animals' "xenobiotic defense system"--a biochemical process that allows cells to get rid of poisons and other foreign substances.
• "This is the first line of defense used by all cells," said Epel, the Jane and Marshall Steel Jr.
• "It consists of a special protein, called an efflux transporter, that's embedded in the cell membrane and pumps out toxins that get into the cell."
• For the experiment, gills were carefully sliced from living mussels and placed in water containing very low concentrations of synthetic musks--300 parts per billion or less.
• "What we found is that musks are harmful in the sense that they compromise the defense system and let other chemicals in that could be more harmful," Epel said.