It's interesting. I've been paying a lot of close attention to this issue,
because Jenn Lavers is from my university, and one of the strongest critics
of her research, Dr. Maureen Davey, is a close family friend. A lot of the
results about heavy metals in birds haven't been able to be repeated, and
Dr Davey, who has worked in Aboriginal Health for many years (and is a
medical doctor, and senior lecturer in public health at UTas) was initially
quite concerned because short-tailed shearwaters are eaten (muttonbird) and
the contamination was high enough to cause toxicity in people eating it.
However the research she's been involved with hasn't been able to find
significant contamination, and I don't think there's been any demonstration
of negative health effects in people eating the birds either (although I'd
have to check that). There's also been a lot of criticisms of the methods
used, but I didn't really follow those. I should add that this my
impression from a number of discussion with Dr Davey (we often go birding
together), so it's entirely possible I've misunderstood.
There is no doubt that sea birds can be found with large amounts of plastic
in them, but it is much more controversial and debated as to whether this
leads to heavy metal contamination or not. I think it's an issue where
more study might be needed, and making conclusions would be difficult. I
will email Maureen with a link to the show though, and ask for a comment.
Regards,
Jeremy
On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 8:36 PM, Carl Clifford <>wrote:
> Oops, I of course meant the ABC's Catalyst.
>
> Carl Clifford
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