In 2003, Vicki Blazer, a fish pathologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, spliced open a smallmouth bass from the Potomac River and unleashed a controversy that made headlines across the nation. What caused alarm was her discovery that male fish in the Potomac, the river that supplies drinking water to the nation’s capital, were producing female eggs.

Blazer’s worry was that whatever man-made chemicals in the river water were bending the gender of fish could also pose a danger to humans. “If it’s hurting the fish,” asks Blazer, “what is it doing to us?”

It’s a concern shared by other scientists, because studies from New Hampshire to Florida and California have linked abnormal mutations such as six-legged frogs and alligators with small penises to what scientists call “emerging contaminants” from industry, agriculture and consumer products.

Few of us may realize it, but most rivers across America, like the Potomac, serve both as dumping grounds for our wastewater and the source for our drinking water. It’s one big recycling operation. Drinking water utilities clean out most traditional contaminants. But there’s a constant flow of thousands of new chemicals that are unregulated, many from everyday consumer products, such as pharmaceuticals, antibacterial soaps, home cleaners, pesticides, herbicides and personal care products.

After Blazer’s discovery, the USGS launched a nationwide survey of rivers and streams to find out what is in our waterways. The results were alarming. “The broad mixtures we’re finding – antibiotics, antidepressants, fragrances, detergents - It’s a toxic cocktail,” says Dana Kolpin, a USGS research hydrologist who led the study.

Next, USGS teams checked rivers from North Carolina and Indiana to Colorado and Oregon, to see if any of that toxic cocktail was getting into our drinking water systems. They found that about two-thirds of a watch list of about 280 contaminants was, in fact, getting through into our taps. The main worry was so-called endocrine disrupters – that disrupt the way the body normally functions.

“I was surprised by the number of different compounds that were detectable,” says Robert Lawrence, a Johns Hopkins University medical professor who reviewed the results. “I knew we were swimming in a sea of chemical soup but I didn’t realize the soup was quite as concentrated as it is.” Lawrence and Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, say that the kinds of endocrine disrupters found by the USGS can raise the risk of breast cancer, birth defects and lower sperm counts among men.

So does that mean it’s unsafe to drink the water? Scientists disagree. Blazer says she would not risk drinking water from the Potomac. Birnbaum says “at this point the levels are very, very low so I don’t have a great deal of concern that something needs to be done imminently - but it would certainly be nice to reduce what’s getting into the water.”

Background Essay Written by Hedrick Smith.

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