| | Accession Number | 5001847 |
| | Title | Toxicity of lead-contaminated sediments to waterfowl |
| | Project Description | This study was originally undertaken in 1994 in response to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service |
| | Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) case. The studies were litigation sensitive. The |
| | original series of studies involved testing the toxicity of lead-contaminated sediments to waterfowl. |
| | Mining operations along the Coeur dAlene River Basin in Idaho were suspected as the cause of |
| | lead poisoning in waterfowl. The objectives of the original study were to measure the toxicity of |
| | lead-contaminated sediment from the Coeur dAlene River to adult mallards and relate toxicity to |
| | tissue residues of lead. This early work has since been published; the publication is listed in the |
| | Products section. Basically, we found that the consumption of lead-contaminated sediments from |
| | Harrison Slough, in the Coeur dAlene River Basin, did cause toxicity in mallards. Subsequent to |
| | the original work, new funding has been given us to determine whether the addition of phosphoric |
| | acid to lead-contaminated sediments will make the lead less biologically available to waterfowl |
| | that may ingest some of the sediment in the course of feeding. Data collection for this second |
| | phase of our research has been completed, except for lead residues in samples. |
| | Keywords | coeur dalene river, lead, mining, natural resource damage assess, sediments, waterfowl, |
| | Principal | Gary H Heinz, USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center: gary_heinz@usgs.gov; David J Hoffman, |
| | Investigators | USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center: david_hoffman@usgs.gov; |
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