A downstream voyage with mercury
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Abstract
Retrospective essay for the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.
As I look back on my paper, “Effects of Low Dietary Levels of Methyl Mercury on Mallard Reproduction,” published in 1974 in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, a thought sticks in my mind. I realize just how much my mercury research was not unlike a leaf in a stream, carried this way and that, sometimes stalled in an eddy, restarted, and carried downstream at a pace and path that was not completely under my control. I was hired in 1969 by the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center to study the effects of environmental pollutants on the behavior of wildlife. A colleague was conducting a study on the reproductive effects of methylmercury on mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), and he offered to give me some of the ducklings. I conducted a pilot study, testing how readily ducklings approached a tape-recorded maternal call. Sample sizes were small, but the results suggested that ducklings from mercury-treated parents behaved differently than controls. That’s how I got into mercury research—pretty much by chance.
| Publication type | Article |
|---|---|
| Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
| Title | A downstream voyage with mercury |
| Series title | Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology |
| DOI | 10.1007/s00128-016-1909-1 |
| Volume | 97 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Year Published | 2016 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Springer |
| Contributing office(s) | Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Contaminant Biology Program |
| Description | 2 p. |
| First page | 591 |
| Last page | 592 |
| Google Analytic Metrics | Metrics page |