PCBs continue to move up the food chain, with animals at the top often harboring the highest concentrations. Cornell University researchers believe the PCBs interfere with development in part of the bird’s brain responsible for song and could have consequences for breeding. In New York, researchers found chickadees and song sparrows that ate insects contaminated with PCBs along the Hudson River sounded a bit different than ones in uncontaminated areas in the Adirondacks. we still see issues with these legacy compounds.” “While their concentrations in the environment have declined in many situations. “There is five decades of research showing that PCBs have had health impacts on both wildlife and humans,” said Keith Grasman, a biology professor at Calvin University in Michigan who has studied pollutant impacts on birds in the Great Lakes and other places.
Scientists have found they can make some animals more vulnerable to diseases including cancer and can disrupt growth, energy production and reproduction. PCBs, a class of more than 200 chemicals used for almost 50 years, have been found in wildlife around the world, such as Icelandic killer whales, shorebirds along the Great Lakes and bottlenose dolphins along the East Coast and in the Mediterranean. The presence of PCBs on a lake in the shadow of the White Mountains demonstrates how these heat-resistant chemicals once used widely in electrical equipment and other industrial applications continue to pose a threat to wildlife more than four decades after being banned in the United States. That is enough to make us worried and dig into it more.”
“We don’t know what the effects are but some of those eggs are at levels that have exceeded (those) known to cause health and reproductive problems in other bird species. “These are chemical contaminants,” said Grade, who works for the Loon Preservation Committee in New Hampshire.
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