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A downstream voyage with mercury

October 31, 2016

Retrospective essay for the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.


As I look back on my paper, “Effects of Low Dietary Levels of Methyl Mercury on Mallard Reproduction,” published in 1974 in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, a thought sticks in my mind. I realize just how much my mercury research was not unlike a leaf in a stream, carried this way and that, sometimes stalled in an eddy, restarted, and carried downstream at a pace and path that was not completely under my control. I was hired in 1969 by the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center to study the effects of environmental pollutants on the behavior of wildlife. A colleague was conducting a study on the reproductive effects of methylmercury on mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), and he offered to give me some of the ducklings. I conducted a pilot study, testing how readily ducklings approached a tape-recorded maternal call. Sample sizes were small, but the results suggested that ducklings from mercury-treated parents behaved differently than controls. That’s how I got into mercury research—pretty much by chance.

Publication Year 2016
Title A downstream voyage with mercury
DOI 10.1007/s00128-016-1909-1
Authors Gary Heinz
Publication Type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Series Title Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology
Index ID 70177945
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
USGS Organization Patuxent Wildlife Research Center; Contaminant Biology Program
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