Songbirds feeding near the contaminated South River are showing high levels of mercury, even though they aren’t eating food from the river itself, according to a paper published by William and Mary researchers in the journal Science.
Lead author Dan Cristol said his paper has wide-ranging international environmental implications. Mercury is one of the world’s most troublesome pollutants, especially in water. The South River, a major tributary of Virginia’s Shenandoah River, has been under a fish consumption advisory for years, as are some 3,000 other bodies of water in the U.S.
The paper shows high levels of mercury in birds feeding near, but not from, the South River. Cristol and his colleagues also identify the source of the pollutant—mercury-laden spiders eaten by the birds. The Science paper is one of the first, if not the first, to offer scientific documentation of the infiltration of mercury from a contaminated body of water into a purely terrestrial ecosystem.
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