BY JAMES STEINBAUER | Miami University Journalism Student

Particles of antibiotics, antidepressants, birth control, painkillers and a slurry of other pharmaceutical drugs are finding their way into southwest Ohio's streams and rivers and they have scientists and environmental agencies in a regulatory quagmire. Scientists say that some of these drugs could mutate the fish and amphibians they come in contact with, causing them to change gender.

In a study by the Miami Conservancy District, which monitors and analyzes water in the Great Miami River watershed, researchers found 17 different pharmaceutical compounds at 30 different testing sites. A previous study by the United States Geological Survey found more than six times as many. This type of water pollution didn't start in the chemical and paper companies that used to pepper the Great Miami river from Dayton to Hamilton.

It started in your bathroom. "It's us. Everything we take," said Mike Ekberg, a researcher at The Miami Conservancy District. "If you take ibuprofen, your body is going to metabolize some of it, but a lot of it will move through the body un-metabolized. You'll pee it out and it will enter into the sewage system."

Pharmaceutical and personal care products, or P.P.C.P.'s, are being flushed into the Great Miami from wastewater treatment plants or leaching into groundwater from old septic tanks.

Researchers call these particles "emerging contaminants." That's not because they're new — they've been in our waterways for decades. However, the technology needed to detect P.P.C.P's has improved and scientists can now locate them at very small levels.

"When we get down to those smaller levels, it's like, 'Wow, there's more things in here than we ever imagined,'" Ekberg said. "My gut feeling is that pretty much anything people are taking is making it's way into the water. If you know what to look for, you can find it." Chemical Cocktails