Could wind surfers' mystery ailment be due to Columbia River pollution?

HOOD RIVER, Ore. — Braced against high winds, Rachael Pecore waded hip deep into the Columbia River carrying two 100-milliliter jars and an itch to solve the 20-year mystery of "river nose."

For 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, Pecore's river advocacy group says, the reports are higher than ever. And no one knows why.

Pecore's samples, to be tested for E. coli, are the first step in detecting whether the river is responsible.

She handles water quality for Columbia Riverkeeper. With an assist from an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality specialist, Pecore is hoping her samples will take the problem "from hearsay to a spreadsheet."

Riverkeeper is also asking windsurfers to see doctors when they get sick, and to fill out forms detailing symptoms. That may help investigators find their way.

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 Columbia Gorge from Hood River eastward is renowned for wind surfing and kite boarding, bolstering the local economy and drawing a unique band of enthusiasts whose devotion to the sport can border on religious.

In lengthy Internet blog discussions, the windsurfers themselves are split on whether river nose is fact or fiction — and whether the causes can be pinned on something as innocuous as allergens and dehydration or as sinister as sewage and industrial toxics.

Health histories varied dramatically in interviews at Pecore's sample site, Mayer State Park, east of Hood River.

David Bandel Ramirez, a 44-year-old paramedic from The Dalles, Ore., 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 neighboring Rowena, a 20-year surfer at age 61, said he has 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.

Like other devotees, 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, Wash., 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.

The Department of Environmental Quality regularly monitors 11 Columbia tributaries, where bacteria and other pollutants are more easily detected. The monitors haven't found high levels of contaminants likely to make windsurfers sick in the Columbia, said Agnes Lut, DEQ's Columbia River coordinator.

But the Department of Environmental Quality has just one monitor on the Columbia itself, west of Hood River.

Columbia Riverkeeper would like the Department of Environmental Quality to fill in that gap. In the meantime, it's working with a lower-cost state program that helps volunteers draw and test water samples.

Pecore plans to test the water at windsurfing sites first for the E. coli bacteria, a sign of sewage contamination. If those tests are negative, she'll proceed to tests for other bacteria, then algae, viruses and toxics.

If a health hazard is found, the end game would likely be warning signs and advice for windsurfers on when the danger is highest. It would be tough to "tag" a pollutant to its source.

Still damp from her wade, Pecore acknowledged that thorough testing could continue for months and require lots of volunteers. Given the Columbia's volume, the search has a needle-in-a-haystack quality.

But this time the work will continue, Pecore vowed, "until we figure something out."