Nutrient Pollution and Your Health

The Upper Mississippi River flows south about 1,300 miles from its headwaters in Minnesota to its confluence with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois. The river gains volume along its path as it drains nearly 190,000 square miles of land, extending over parts of South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. (USGS)  The LWV Upper Mississippi River Region ILO (UMRR) consists of more than 50 local LWV Leagues in this watershed, as well as the State Leagues for Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois. 
 
Nutrient pollution is the discharge to our waterways of excessive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizers as well as human and animal wastes.  The chief action focus of the LWV UMRR is to spread awareness of the problems caused by nutrient pollution.  One kind of problem is when the byproducts produced by algae, which grow heavily in nutrient-rich water, affect drinking water supplies. 

Volume of nitrogen sent to the Gulf of Mexico from streams in the Mississippi River basin.  Upper Mississippi Region outlined in black.  

​This problem is a focus of the website Circle of Blue.  They say, “Expansive blooms of toxic algae are poisoning drinking water, closing beaches, and creating oxygen-deprived aquatic “dead zones” around the globe. Driven by excess amounts of nutrients washing into waterways from expanding agriculture and cities, the blooms represent a growing water quality crisis that could further deteriorate under climate change.”  (Circle of Blue) On this website, there are several stories about algal blooms and human health. 
 
In 2013, the International Joint Commission for the Great Lakes issued a literature review citing problems that can arise from these algal by-products.  (IJC)  This scholarly research reports that “… many (blue-green algae blooms) produce toxic secondary metabolites, the cyanotoxins, which can cause serious, acute intoxication in mammals (including humans) affecting the hepatopancreatic, digestive, endocrine, dermal, and nervous systems. This report addresses the objective to assess the human health impacts associated with harmful algal blooms (HABs) especially those associated with blooms of cyanobacteria or blue-green algae (cyanoHABs).”
 
Algae blooms are very common on the Upper Mississippi and its tributaries, which provide drinking water for millions of Americans.  Environmental degradation resulting from excessive nutrients is very visible; it is time that we also begin to examine the human health impacts.  These impacts have been documented extensively in the Great Lakes region, so we know it can happen here as well.  

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