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Cease the presses: Somebody constitute a use for the pigeons in New York City. A new study of pigeons in the Urban center shows that lead levels in the pigeons track closely with atomic number 82 levels in children living in the same neighborhoods.

"Pigeons breathe the aforementioned air, walk the aforementioned sidewalks, and often eat the same nutrient equally we exercise. What if we could use them to monitor possible dangers to our wellness in the environment, similar lead pollution?" asked Rebecca Calisi, banana professor at UC Davis, who conducted the study with undergraduate student Fayme Cai while at Columbia. The report is published in the latest issue of Chemosphere.

They team found that the pigeons' claret lead levels rose in summer, in just the aforementioned way equally in children. Zip codes with high lead levels in pigeons also had some of the highest rates of raised levels of pb in resident children.

Why? Urban pigeons are particularly suitable for this work because they don't fly far, typically spending their lives within an area of a few blocks, said Calisi.

The sources of urban lead pollution aren't all articulate. Leaded paint tin still be plant in erstwhile buildings, simply pigeons don't spend much time indoors. Route and air traffic are likely sources of particulate and airborne lead, and pigeons do pick upward roadside gravel to help digest their food. Information technology makes sense, so, that children living virtually the same sources of lead pollution could likewise be exposed, fifty-fifty bringing lead into their households past regular foot traffic.

While pigeons accept been used to monitor various types of pollution in some European cities, to her cognition no 1 has previously correlated lead exposure in birds with exposure rates in children, Calisi said.

Calisi is expanding the project, heading Due west to written report other pollutants such as other heavy metals, pesticides and burn down retardants, in California cities.

"This is a powerful example of how we tin utilise pigeons to monitor the location and prevalence of pollutants," Calisi added. "We can use these 'rats with wings' — which are annihilation but — to monitor dangers to man wellness."

Lead is dangerous to humans of all ages, but particularly then to children. Atomic number 82 interferes with the function and development of the nervous arrangement and is strongly linked to both learning and developmental disabilities at sufficiently high concentrations. Even more than problematic, there's no known lower threshold at which lead exposure can exist deemed "condom."

LeadRate

One of the more interesting theories almost pb is the potential link between boilerplate childhood lead levels and the number of violent crimes committed per capita in the Us. From the 1930s to the early 1970s, tearing crime in America steadily increased. Thereafter, violent law-breaking levels began to drop. While the exact shape of the curve depends on whether y'all examine all violent crime (as above) or only use the murder rate, there'south a startling correlation betwixt crime levels and the corporeality of lead detected in childhood populations.

Swell for a bird then infamous, Tom Lehrer one time wrote a song about the joys of feeding pigeons peanuts coated in cyanide. And then again, who hasn't whiled away a pleasant…

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