High Agricultural Activity Research Articles

The search for chlorinated dibenzofurans and chlorinated dibenzodioxins in wildlife populations showing elevated levels of embryonic death.

Various kinds of reproductive abnormalities have been documented among wildlife species in North America. All are associated with areas of high agricultural or industrial activity and have been shown, or are assumed to be, pollutant-induced. Selected wildlife populations may therefore serve as the best indicators of the presence in the environment of compounds which have deleterious effects on organisms at very low concentrations, such as several of the chlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and chlorinated dibenzofurans. The best documented of the abnormalities observed in wildlife is the shell thinning of eggs of raptorial and fish-eating species of birds. Contemporary samples show a significant increase in the variance of such parameters as shell weight, shell thickness and an index of shell thickness when com-