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<h1><b><font size=6 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:24.0pt'>Officials
worry urinating swimmers may be reason for 500 dead fish</span></font></b></h1>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>By Isolde Raftery, msnbc.com May 13, 2012</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Peeing
while swimming in a lake may not just be taboo – it could also be lethal,
for the fish.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>At least
that's what a group of anglers contend, <a
href="http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20120511-42491.html">blaming swimmers for
the 500 dead fish</a> that have turned up in a picturesque German lake near <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hamburg</st1:place></st1:State>, The Local
reported.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"Swimmers
who urinate in the lake are introducing a lot of phosphate," Manfred
Siedler, a spokesman for an angler’s group, told <i><span
style='font-style:italic'>Bild</span></i> newspaper. "We're calculating
half a liter of urine per swimmer per day."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Skeptics
questioned whether the outcry was an attempt by fishermen to oust bathers
– with whom they have long feuded, according to The Local – but are
saying this could be possible.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><a
href="http://io9.com/5909846/can-peeing-in-a-lake-really-kill-fish">IO9.com, a
Gawker science blog</a> posed the question, “Can anything as natural as
peeing in a lake kill the fish?”</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
answer, apparently, is yes.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The urine
itself doesn’t harm the fish but sets off a series of environmental
events that ultimately suffocate the fish. First, the urine acts as a
fertilizer for the blue-green algae in the water. Once they have consumed all
the fertilizer, the algae continue sucking up available oxygen in the water,
IO9.com explained. When the algae die and start to decompose, they further use
up oxygen. That’s when fish start to die.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Bild
reported that authorities have poured more than half a million dollars of an
anti-phosphate agent called Bentophos into the lake, to no avail. (Bentophos
has been <a href="http://www.phoslock.pl/pliki/presentation_poznan_en.pdf">tested
in artificial lakes</a> that were shut down due to massive bacterial blooms.)</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>For now,
the lake is closed to swimmers because of the high levels of algae (which can
cause swimmer's itch), but the city's environmental authority is fighting the
closure, The Local reported.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Kerstin
Graupner, a spokeswoman for the environmental authority, told The Local that
she blamed natural causes and ice-skaters. "The ice-skaters make a noise
that wakes the fish out of hibernation," Graupner said. "Then they
can't breathe and freeze. That's a very common phenomenon."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Graupner’s
agency called on a university in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hamburg</st1:place></st1:State>
to test the anglers’ theory. According to The Local, it appears the
anglers may have a point – the scientists found anabaena algae blooms,
which produce a toxin that ultimately restricts fish breathing. </span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
German lake isn’t the only place where officials worry about swimmers; <a
href="http://www.hottnez.com/to-pee-or-not-to-pee-10-places-you-should-never-pee/">signs
at the Great Barrier Reef ask swimmers</a> not to urinate in the water. Doing
so apparently kills the corals, which grow in low nutrient waters.</span></font></p>
<h1><b><font size=6 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:24.0pt'>Can
peeing in a lake really kill fish?</span></font></b></h1>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><a
href="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17mfxs2po0pf0jpg/original.jpg"></a>There's
been a story kicking around in the news recently about a fight in Hamburg,
Germany, where recreational swimmers have supposedly killed fish by peeing in
Eichbaum Lake, making fishermen really (get ready) pissed off. <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Reading</st1:place></st1:City> this set off my
potential-Internet-baloney alarm bells: <a
href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/12/swimmers-urine-to-blame-for-500-fish-deaths-german-fishermen-say/">short
articles</a>, coming from a foreign country, based off <a
href="http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20120511-42491.html">one English-language
report</a>, with a spokesman from the Hamburger Angling Association as the main
source. Is there anything to this? Can anything as natural as peeing in a lake
kill the fish?</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>In a
word, yes. Whether pee was the murder weapon in this particular whodunnit
depends on some factors that aren't clear from these scant reports, like how
many people are swimming there and the chemistry of the lake. But urine
certainly can kill fish, though it's not actually the urine that does it.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Urine
includes plenty of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, nutrients that are
helpful for plant growth. In fact, those are the three main ingredients in both
industrial fertilizer and natural fertilizers like manure. (The nitrogren in
urine isn't N<sub>2</sub>, the gas that makes up most of the
atmosphere—it's N<sup>3-</sup>, the "fixed" nitrogen that
plants need.) If you let your pee sit around for a long while (I don't
recommend doing this, for obvious reasons), it will precipitate out <a
href="http://www.sswm.info/category/implementation-tools/reuse-and-recharge/hardware/reuse-urine-and-faeces-agriculture/fertili">an
odorless fertilizer called struvite</a>.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>So if you
add a lot of urine to a lake, you're essentially dumping in a bunch of
fertilizer, which cases a bloom of algae. After they've used up the fertilizer,
the algae continue using oxygen, and when they die, their decomposition
consumes still more, drastically lowering the levels of oxygen in the lake,
which is what generally kills fish. The same kind of fish die-off happen when <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutrophication#Sources_of_high_nutrient_runoff">agricultural
run-off reaches rivers and lakes</a>—the run-off includes lots of
fertilizer, which is basically urine, after all. And Eichbaum's fish may be
facing an unusual additional danger: <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Hamburg</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> scientists
have reportedly found a particular type of algae in the lake that actually
releases a toxin.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Ultimately,
it seems plausible that some seemingly harmless urine is actually harming the
lake's fish. It wouldn't be the first time a large body of water faced the same
risk: ecologists <a
href="http://www.hottnez.com/to-pee-or-not-to-pee-10-places-you-should-never-pee/">warn
visitors not to pee</a> when they visit the beautiful Great Barrier Reef
(pictured above) for fear that algae blooms will kill the coral.</span></font></p>
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