Worrisome chemical found in Bay Area, Santa Cruz creeks
Six years ago, scientists in the Pacific Northwest untangled a mystery about why salmon were dying in the region, often in astonishing numbers - with as many as 90% of the migrating adult coho salmon perishing in parts of Puget Sound. The culprit turned out to be a toxic chemical from tires washing into waterways. Now, some of the same researchers that made the 2020 discovery have confirmed that this tire-derived compound is present, at worrisome levels, in salmon-bearing watersheds in California. A study published last month in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters finds that at least 10 rivers and creeks in the Bay Area and Santa Cruz region have had potentially lethal concentrations of the chemical 6PPD-quinone after stormwater flowed into them. While salmon are much less plentiful in these waterways than they are in Oregon and Washington, five of the California…
