Abstract
Exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) eggs on the Sheboygan River, Wisconsin in the 1990s was higher at sites downstream (geometric means = 3.33–8.69 μg/g wet wt.) of the putative PCB source in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin than it was above the source (1.24 μg/g) with the exposure declining as the distance downstream of the source increased. A similar pattern of declining exposure was present in the 2010s as well. Although exposure to PCBs in eggs along the Sheboygan River at sites downstream of Sheboygan Falls has declined by ~60 % since the mid-1990s (8.69 down to 3.27 μg/g) there still seems to be residual pockets of contamination that are exposing some individuals (~25 %) to PCB contamination, similar to exposure found in the 1990s. The exposure patterns in eggs and nestlings among sites, and the changes between the two decades, are further validated by accumulation rate information.
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Acknowledgments
We thank River Wildlife, City of Sheboygan, Mayline Co., Sarah and Pete Gahagan,and Richard Seichter for access to their property; Diana Goldberg, Andrew Haertel, Kristina Mott, Kelsey Prestby, Darin Ripp, Josh TeSlaa, and Jocelyn Tschaikovsky for field assistance; Paul M. Dummer for field and data management assistance; David Rogers for assistance with analytical methodology; and L.K. Lohman and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Use of trade, product, or firm names does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that we have no conflict of interest. Data were collected under current laws of the United States of America. The work in 2010–2012 was funded by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and was approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee at the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center.
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Custer, C.M., Custer, T.W., Strom, S.M. et al. Changes in polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) exposure in tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) nesting along the Sheboygan River, WI, USA. Ecotoxicology 23, 1439–1446 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-014-1286-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-014-1286-7