ET&C Best Paper of 2014

Abstract

Three external reviewers exceptionally praised the article written by Binnington and Wania [1]. As mentioned by 1 reviewer, the work "sheds a new and interesting light on a phenomenon that has been reported many times in the wildlife monitoring literature." In their article, the University of Toronto researchers aimed to improve understanding of agerelated changes in contaminant burdens. A mechanistic modeling study was pursued that utilized rich existing data from Arctic wildlife species that varied with respect to physiological and other characteristics. Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)-153 was used as a model contaminant, and burdens were compared between individuals of different ages at a specific time (referred to as cross-sectional body burden-age trends) with the same individual sampled over time (referred to as longitudinal body burden-age trends). The models suggest that the birth cohort effect, or sampling year relative to the year of peak contamination, is a critical determinant of body burdens. This was predicted to hold true in males but not females, in which lactation represented a major excretory process. The study offers a major contribution to the way that we think about contaminant burdens in wildlife and is expected to help improve the utility of such data. REFERENCE[1] Binnington MJ, Wania F. 2014. Clarifying relationships between persistent organic pollutant concentrations and age in wildlife biomonitoring: Individuals, cross-sections, and the roles of lifespan and sex. Environ Toxicol