'It smells like death.' Toxic algae blooms, new health hazards — and what’s being done

Julie Sherwood
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

When a blue-green algae bloom intensified in a canal of the St. Lucie River in Florida the summer of 2018, workers at a magazine office on the canal began complaining of respiratory problems, itchy eyes and runny noses. A pungent, rotting smell came off the bloom.

"It smells like death," is how publisher of the Florida Sportsman, Blair Wickstrom, described it. "Me, I felt nauseous,” he told the TCPalm digital site for Treasure Coast Newspapers, a Gannett publication. "I ate 10 Tums on Monday and another 10 Tuesday.”

Wickstrom shut down the office, waiting for the bloom to abate. “It wasn't worth the risk to make people come here to work when we didn't know what kind of health issues, both short-term and long-term, they were facing,” he said.

As blue-green algae blooms become more toxic, so does the air inhaled by the people who live and work around them. A study led by scientists at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Fort Pierce reported the toxic correlation based on research during the massive, and toxic, algae blooms in the St. Lucie River in summer 2018.

The findings “sent shock waves,” said Dan Levy, a presenter at a recent, virtual symposium on Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) focused on upstate New York and the Finger Lakes region. Levy, at the forefront of research and development involving HABs, was joined by fellow experts with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and area academic institutions including Cornell University, SUNY Fredonia and the Finger Lakes Institute at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. 

A blue green algae bloom is seen from shore on the east side of Canandaigua Lake in summer 2021.

Until a few years ago, many of the Finger Lakes were largely free of toxic algae blooms. But since 2017, each of the 11 Finger Lakes has experienced at least one outbreak of toxic algae. For most of the lakes it is now a regular, annual occurrence. 

“Problems are getting worse, not better,” said Levy, a vice president for environmental business with infrastructure consulting firm AECOM, whose research and development for treatment and prevention of harmful algal blooms spans over three decades. 

'It can be truly ugly'

Marty Gordon captured this drone image Oct. 6, 2021 around 4:30 p.m., showing a blue-green algae bloom encircling in the area of Walton Point on the west side of Canandaigua Lake in South Bristol.

As part of the Florida study, researchers took nasal swabs from 121 people who live and work along the St. Lucie — and found microcystin in 115. At the same time, researchers collected and analyzed 47 surface water samples from the river for microcystin.

Samples tested by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection during that time indicate the blooms were highly toxic. For example, a bloom sampled Aug. 2 at Central Marine on the river's north shore in Stuart contained microcystin at a rate of 110 parts per billion, more than 10 times too toxic to touch. A bloom sampled Aug. 23, 2018, immediately upstream of the St. Lucie Lock and Dam, where Lake Okeechobee water enters the river, contained microcystin at a level of 495.06 parts per billion, nearly 50 times the level considered hazardous. 

As the toxins in the river samples increased, so did the concentration of microcystin in the nasal swabs. In fact, all the samples with no microcystin came at the end of the testing period when the blooms had dissipated.

At the symposium, James Tierney, DEC deputy commissioner for Water Resources, noted blue-green algae “tends to thrive in calmer, warm water. He added that climate change will likely increase the incidence of toxic blooms. “It can be truly ugly,” he said. “We don’t want to go in that direction.”

Exposure to toxic algae can cause immediate symptoms, such as a runny nose, watery eyes and trouble breathing. Long-term exposure has been linked to liver disease and is suspected of causing neurological ailments years down the road.

The World Health Organization says "recreational contact" with water containing microcystin at 10 parts per billion is hazardous. The federal Environmental Protection Agency sets the threshold at 8 parts per billion.

The average concentration of microcystin in the study participants' noses was 0.61 parts per billion. "It's a low number," said Adam Schaefer, a Harbor Branch epidemiologist and lead author of the study published last year in the journal Harmful Algae.

The study didn't determine how close you have to be to a bloom to breathe in toxins, but it did note people who worked around blooms and were more likely to have physical contact had higher levels of microcystin in their noses.

How much of the toxin microcystin you have to inhale, and for how long, to cause a health hazard is yet to be determined, said Schaefer.

Turning the tide on blue green algae

This shows harmful blue green algae in Canandaigua Lake in August 2019.

The dramatic rise of toxic blue-green algae blooms in recent years put efforts to mitigate harmful blooms “on the fast track,” DEC research scientist Lew McCaffrey said in the symposium.

A new development, harvesting blue green algae — essentially removing the nutrients of toxic blooms and returning toxic-free water to the lakes — is making waves.

It’s “a game changer,” said Levy, a co-inventor of the patented SEDCUT dredging technology developed for the removal of nutrient-rich, phosphorus-laden sediments from Lake Okeechobee, Florida’s largest freshwater lake. 

Levy explained algae harvesting as a clarifying process, which exports nutrients and returns clear, clean water. “We really have a tool that is available and effective,” he said.

This August, a pilot project on Lake Jesup in Florida involved an algae harvesting unit mounted on a barge transported around the lake. St. Johns River Water Management District described it as an “innovative dissolved air flotation technology” used to attach microscopic air bubbles to algae and suspended sediment. The technology separates algal biomass and clarified water. The clarified water goes back into the lake, while the algal biomass is then managed/treated at a wastewater treatment plant.

The thick, pea-soup like blue green algae is seen along a shoreline of Canandaigua Lake on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. This shoreline bloom is seen on the west side of the lake at Menteth Point.

Next steps: “We want to advance into agriculture and then into sustainable aviation fuel,” said Levy. The exported nutrients can be harvested back to make fertilizer pellets or liquid fertilizer. Algae can also be a source for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The use of SAF is on the rise as its use reduces pollution-causing carbon emissions compared to traditional jet fuel. According to aviation benefits.org, an initiative of the commercial aviation industry, dozens of airlines are on board. 

Tierney said tackling toxic blooms that are now in every state can be done only by municipalities, agencies, institutions, organizations and communities working together. That is what has been happening in New York state, according to the presenters. Anthony Prestigiacomo, a research scientist with the DEC, talked about the multi-year plan underway to analyze and document sources of pollutants and recommend actions to improve water quality in the lakes.

In 2016, the DEC established the Finger Lakes Water Hub, a multi-regional watershed team to address Finger Lakes water quality issues.

“We have made pretty good progress in the Finger Lakes,” Prestigiacomo said, noting partnerships with local municipalities, watershed associations and like-minded groups. Others in the Harmful Algal Blooms Symposium, which has taken place annually since 2014, talked about the significant role of citizen scientists. Volunteers across the region are working with professionals in everything from water sampling to spotting and reporting blooms and other water-quality related incidents.

“This is a gigantic issue — there is nobody large and in charge,” said Tierney.  “We are in it together.”

Includes reporting by Tyler Treadway,  environmental reporter with TCPalm.com.