URI grad student finds chemical contaminants in area seabirds
 |
| URI graduate student Anna Robuck dissects a seabird as part of her PFAS research. (Photo courtesy of Anna Robuck) |
The latest study, by a
University of Rhode Island graduate student, found high levels of the compounds
in seabirds from offshore Massachusetts and coastal Rhode Island and North
Carolina.
Chief among the findings was the discovery that one
type of PFAS, perfluorooctanesulfonic acid or PFOS, which has not been produced
since the early 2000s, is the most dominant PFAS compound in the birds from all
three sites, further illustrating how these chemicals do not breakdown in the
environment and can remain in animal tissues for many years.
“Wildlife is being inundated with PFAS,” said Anna Robuck, a doctoral student at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography, who has been studying PFAS with Professor Rainer Lohmann since 2016.
“We don’t really
understand what that means for wildlife health overall, since scientists are
just catching up with what PFAS means for human health. What we do know is that
we’re seeing significant concentrations that laboratory studies tell us are
concerning.”
Her research was published this month in the
journal Environmental Science and Technology.
The concentrations of PFAS Robuck found in seabird
livers are comparable to levels found in other bird studies that suggested that
the compounds may be causing negative reproductive health outcomes.
“This speaks to the incredible persistence of these
compounds,” she said. “Once in the environment, it’s there in perpetuity for it
to be accumulated by wildlife. And even though we no longer produce PFOS, we
still produce a series of related compounds that, once in the environment,
readily transform into PFOS.”
Robuck, a native of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, measured the levels of PFAS in the livers of herring gulls from Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, great shearwaters in the offshore waters of Massachusetts Bay, and royal and sandwich terns from Cape Fear, North Carolina. All of the birds were juveniles found dead near their breeding or feeding grounds.
The
three sites were chosen to represent birds from an urban area where PFAS
exposure is common (Narragansett Bay), an offshore area of birds that seldom
approach land (Massachusetts Bay), and an area downstream of a major PFAS
producer (Cape Fear).
“We studied their livers because there is a specific
protein in the liver that PFAS love to bind to,” Robuck said. “We also know
that in humans, PFAS exposure leads to liver damage and impairment of
function.”
Among her other findings, Robuck discovered that the
North Carolina birds that hatched downstream from a PFAS production site
contained several novel PFAS compounds that have been created in recent years
to replace those that have been phased out.
“The nesting colonies where we got the Cape Fear
birds from are 90 miles from the production facility,” she said. “This is the
first detection of these compounds in liver tissue and the furthest distance
from the known industrial source.
“Surprisingly, we also found those same novel PFAS
in birds that have no connection to Cape Fear – in one gull from Narragansett
Bay and two shearwaters in Massachusetts Bay,” she added. “It suggests that
these replacement compounds are highly persistent and capable of migrating
further in the environment than we were aware of. There also may be more
sources of the compounds than we know about.”
Of particular note, Robuck also found that as PFAS
levels increased in the birds, the phospholipid levels in their liver
decreased, a finding that is especially concerning.
“That’s a really big deal because fats are important
for reproductive health, migration, raising their young successfully, and other
elements of their life cycle,” Robuck said. “The fact that there is an
observable relationship between PFAS and fats deserves a lot more investigation
to see what it could be doing to wildlife populations.”
In addition, Robuck detected the same PFAS levels in
the offshore birds as those from inshore Rhode Island.
“They didn’t have the same kind of PFAS, but they
had the same total level,” she said. “I expected offshore birds to be a lot
lower, since those birds never come to land. It suggests that even our most
remote and most pristine habitats are facing exposure to these compounds.”
Robuck’s next study will analyze the PFAS
concentrations in other tissues from the same birds. She hopes the resulting
data will be included in future government assessments of the impact of PFAS in
wildlife and the environment.
