Decades of studying polluted Piles Creek led to advances in our understanding of how pollution affects crabs, fish and shrimp, including those that we eat.
It was the 1970s. The first Earth Day had happened, and there were new federal laws and a federal agency to protect the environment. Despite these important advances, a legacy of pollution still lurked in streams, marshes and other waterways. Stimulated by reports of terrible effects of mercury pollution in Japan, marine biologist Judith S. Weis, her husband, biologist Peddrick Weis, and numerous graduate students at Rutgers University set out on what would become a three-decade journey to understand how mercury and other chemical pollution affects estuarine animals, including those we eat.
They found that some species can tolerate mercury pollution, but that wasn’t entirely good news.
Weis, who taught for four decades at Rutgers, told The Revelator about the evolution of their ground-breaking research, what initially stumped them, and why pollution can change animal behavior.
What a New Jersey Creek Taught Us About How Animals Respond to Pollution • The Revelator
It was the 1970s. The first Earth Day had happened, and there were new federal laws and a federal agency to protect the environment. Despite these important advances, a legacy of pollution still lurked in streams, marshes and other waterways. Stimulated by reports of terrible effects of mercury pollution in Japan, marine biologist Judith S. Weis, her husband, biologist Peddrick Weis, and numerous graduate students at Rutgers University set out on what would become a three-decade journey to understand how mercury and other chemical pollution affects estuarine animals, including those we eat.
They found that some species can tolerate mercury pollution, but that wasn’t entirely good news.
Weis, who taught for four decades at Rutgers, told The Revelator about the evolution of their ground-breaking research, what initially stumped them, and why pollution can change animal behavior.
What a New Jersey Creek Taught Us About How Animals Respond to Pollution • The Revelator