Superfund Research Program

Wildlife Applications to Remediation Decision-Making

Project Leader: Michael J. Hooper (Texas Tech University)
Grant Number: P42ES004696
Funding Period: 1995 - 2006

Project-Specific Links

Final Progress Reports

Year:   2005  1999 

Project 7 focussed on bringing to completion a variety of studies, initiating a large scale field study at Anaconda, MT and presenting an SBRP sponsored national meeting on the topic of the project. Researchers brought to completed studies investigating in ovo toxicokinetics of organochlorines in chickens, molecular characterizations of 1A1 and 1B enzymes in wildlife, racoons at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and small mammal mercury exposures in the Carson River area. This funding period represented our first full season working on the Anaconda Smelter Site at Anaconda, MT. Field efforts focussed on small mammal studies and nest box studies of passerines (songbirds - European starlings, mountain bluebirds, tree swallows) and American kestrels. Preliminary data suggest elevated exposure levels of lead, cadmium, arsenic and copper in all species, with lead levels of particular concern. Project investigators are following up on an initial finding that in situ remediation techniques (plowing in lime, fertilizer and reseeding with metal tolerant plant species) leads to increased bioavailability of soil metals in small mammals inhabiting those sites.

In August, 1999, the researchers hosted a national meeting on "Wildlife Use in Remediation Decision Making" in Denver, Colorado. The meeting's primary sponsor was the NIEHS/EPA SBRP with additional funding from US EPA Region 8 and ATSDR. The 75 meeting participants spent three days exploring the role that wildlife species can and do play in the remediation decision making process for chemically contaminated sites. Proceedings of the meeting (12 papers) are currently being compiled and will be published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (the SETAC Journal) in early 2001.