as hell about this situation, but they aren't," said Brad Ack, head of the Puget Sound Action Team, a government agency. "We haven't gotten the message across."

Scientists gave sweeping overviews of the countless ways residents, businesses and government entities have fouled the Sound. They explained to the hundreds of people in attendance at Seattle's Town Hall how contaminants washing off our roads, being flushed down our toilets and dumped in oil spills are harming marine life and humans.

Chinook caught in the state's inland sea are contaminated with levels of PCBs -- polychlorinated biphenyls -- up to six times higher than fish from the Columbia and Sacramento rivers and along the east side of Vancouver Island. The chinook are also packing away flame retardants added to a wide range of consumer products, state scientists reported. Both can hurt people as well as wild creatures.

Part of the challenge comes from the region's geography. The Sound is long and deep, but shallow at the northern end like a bathtub, limiting flushing with ocean water.

When pollution is dumped, "there's this big recycling," said Sandra O'Neill, a fish contamination expert with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. "Once it's here, it stays in the Sound."

Bottom line: It's crucial to curtail the flow of pollution in the first place, experts said.

Take the high levels of PCBs that O'Neill and others measured. The industrial chemicals have been banned since the 1970s. Scientists suspect that they're cycling through the ecosystem, getting picked up by worms and other invertebrates in the mud, which are eaten by fish that are consumed by larger fish, mammals and birds. The animals die, then decompose, and the cycle repeats.

The same thing happens with flame retardants that O'Neill found in herring, lingcod, rockfish and English sole. Researchers Wednesday reported that the chemicals -- which are still added to electronics, seat cushions and fabrics -- can cause developmental and hormone problems in fish.

Many of the Sound's pollutants are ingested by people intentionally, including anti-depressants, drugs to curb nicotine addiction, caffeine and hormones. The chemicals flow to the sea in sewer water.

Research shows that some of these chemicals can skew the ratio of female to male fish, or reduce the fertility of male fish. The situation is troubling, said Edward Furlong of the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, because exposure for the fish is "constant, direct and unavoidable."

The specter of expected population growth was also cause for concern as more woods and open spaces are converted to highways and parking lots, likely leading to more pollution runoff. Rural land will soon become urban -- and potentially inhospitable for salmon.

"Year to year, we're having recurrent fish kills in urban creeks," said Nat Scholz, a manager with NOAA Fisheries' Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Last year, 72 percent of the coho returning to West Seattle's Longfellow Creek keeled over before depositing their eggs, Scholz said. When found alive, the fish behaved strangely, acting disoriented, mouths gaping and fins flailing.

The suspected cause of the deaths was pollution washing off roads and landscaped properties. That could lead to speedy extinctions, Scholz said. At even lower death rates than those observed, computer models show populations vanishing in 59 years.

And baby coho exposed to the storm water suffered lethal brain defects in some cases, whereas survivors were smaller or developmentally delayed.

The frightening range of problems plaguing the Sound led some Wednesday to suggest drastic steps for cleaning it up.

Sewage-treatment plants might need to do more to catch pharmaceuticals and industrial waste, and permits for sewage-plant pollution might need to be made stricter. The state could look at a law requiring that consumer products are clearly labeled to identify harmful substances.

Other chemicals -- particularly long-lived pollutants that accumulate in people and animals -- might need to be banned, Ack said.

"That's going to take some bold steps," he said. "It's a very tough political fight."

P-I reporter Lisa Stiffler can be reached at 206-448-8042 or lisastiffler@seattlepi.com.