Columbia users report odd sickness

HOOD RIVER, Ore. – They call it “river nose,” an occasional affliction that has been a mystery for at least 20 years.

Some avid wind surfers and kite boarders have complained of symptoms that can include stuffy noses, sinus infections, sneezing attacks, cuts that don’t heal, nausea and fatigue.

This year, the number of reports of symptoms is higher than ever, according to Columbia Riverkeeper.

So the river advocacy group, with the help of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, is investigating.

Potential culprits are many in a deep, wide river that starts at a Canadian glacier and runs 1,200 miles, passing through the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and picking up agricultural runoff, heaps of allergens, dioxins from 13 pulp and paper mills, heavy metals from mines, and sewer outflows from cities and septic tanks along the way.

The windsurfers themselves are split on whether river nose is fact or fiction.

David Bandel Ramirez, a 44-year-old paramedic from The Dalles, said he hasn’t gotten sick from the Columbia; he’s more concerned about the stuff his 2-year-old daughter catches in the city pool. Others said they worry more about wind surfing in ponds than the rapidly recycled waters of the Columbia.

But David Wickman, of Rowena, a 20-year surfer at age 61, said he’s taken to wearing nose plugs if he knows he’ll be trying new tricks and hitting the whitecaps often.

“If you get a lot of water up your nose, you’re going to get flu symptoms,” Wickman said. “There are 50 rivers feeding into this one, and a lot of pesticides and runoff, and you’ve got the Hanford plant. It’s just kind of a soup in there.”

Another avid windsurfer, Jeff Castleberry, of Underwood, Wash., helped spur interest from Columbia Riverkeeper.

Castleberry and his wife have moved to follow the wind, relocating from Seattle to Portland to Underwood, across from Hood River. He works a late shift as a Hewlett-Packard engineer in Vancouver, leaving more free time for surfing.

Castleberry says he never had health effects from his frequent wind surfing until he hit the Columbia. Now he gets “stuffiness you would not believe,” particularly in the spring, rapid-fire sneezing, some sinus infections, and, this year, unusual fatigue.

“Some of it is you spend hours in the water, and you get tossed around a lot,” Castleberry said. “But I just don’t want to find out 10 years from now that I’ve been poisoning myself.”

Oregon environmental and health regulators say the Columbia’s high volume works in windsurfers’ favor, diluting the effects of pollution. Much of the river’s most infamous pollution – including PCBs and the banned pesticide DDT – persists in river sediment, not surface water.

Deanna Conners, a public health toxicologist with Oregon’s Department of Human Services, said the wide variety of symptoms reported makes them less likely to be from any single cause.

A 1990s state review spurred by windsurfer concerns found no measurable problems, and 1990s monitoring by the group that preceded Columbia Riverkeeper had inconclusive results.

If a health hazard is found, warning signs and advice for windsurfers would likely be posted when the danger is highest.