Temporal trends of legacy organochlorines in different white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) subpopulations: A retrospective investigation using archived feathersShow others and affiliations
2020 (English)In: Environment International, ISSN ISSN 0160-4120, Vol. 138, p. 1-10, article id 105618Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Understanding the spatiotemporal patterns of legacy organochlorines (OCs) is often difficult because monitoringpractices differ among studies, fragmented study periods, and unaccounted confounding by ecological variables.We therefore reconstructed long-term (1939–2015) and large-scale (West Greenland, Norway, and centralSweden) trends of major legacy OCs using white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) body feathers, to understandthe exposure dynamics in regions with different contamination sources and concentrations, as well as the effectiveness of legislations. We included dietary proxies (δ13C and δ15N) in temporal trend models to control forpotential dietary plasticity. Consistent with the hypothesised high local pollution sources, levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethanes (DDTs) and hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCHs) inthe Swedish subpopulation exceeded those in the other subpopulations. In contrast, chlordanes (CHLs) andhexachlorobenzene (HCB) showed higher concentrations in Greenland, suggesting the importance of long-rangetransport. The models showed significantly decreasing trends for all OCs in Sweden in 1968–2011 except forCHLs, which only decreased since the 1980s. Nevertheless, median concentrations of DDTs and PCBs remainedelevated in the Swedish subpopulation throughout the 1970s, suggesting that the decreases only commencedafter the implementation of regulations during the 1970s. We observed significant trends of increasing concentrations of PCBs, CHLs and HCB in Norway from the 1930s to the 1970s/1980s and decreasing concentrationsthereafter. All OC concentrations, except those of PCBs were generally significantly decreasing in the Greenlandsubpopulation in 1985-2013. All three subpopulations showed generally increasing proportions of the morepersistent compounds (CB 153, p.p′-DDE and β-HCH) and decreasing proportions of the less persistent ones (CB52, p.p′-DDT, α- and γ-HCH). Declining trends of OC concentrations may imply the decreasing influence of legacyOCs in these subpopulations. Finally, our results demonstrate the usefulness of archived museum feathers inretrospective monitoring of spatiotemporal trends of legacy OCs using birds of prey as sentinels.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020. Vol. 138, p. 1-10, article id 105618
Keywords [en]
POPs Stable isotopes Body feathers Museum collection Organochlorines
National Category
Natural Sciences
Research subject
Man and the environment
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:nrm:diva-4040DOI: 10.1016/j.envint.2020OAI: oai:DiVA.org:nrm-4040DiVA, id: diva2:1510757
Projects
EcoStress (miljögifter)
Note
Additional authors:
Bård-Jørgen Bårdsen, David Boertmann, Rune Dietz, Aili Lage Labansen, Gilles Lepoint,Ralf Schulz, Govindan Malarvannan, Christian Sonne, Kasper Thorup, Anders P. Tøttrup,Jochen P. Zubrod, Marcel Eens
2020-12-162020-12-162020-12-16Bibliographically approved