Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. John, welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice as people who are harder and smarter working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton and I work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. And I'm joined today by Carolyn Foley. Carolyn, what is up?

Carolyn Foley 0:22
You just said harder and smarter working. And I don't know if that was intentional, or if it's just this week has been nuts.

Stuart Carlton 0:29
It was not intentional, but it's probably true. Most people are harder than I am in many, many definitions of that term. So, yeah, that if you want to proxy for how my weekends, that's as good a proxy as any. But you know what, it's Friday afternoon. It's a beautiful outside, I've cracked open one drink here of a certain type and about one hour, I'm going to crack open another drink of another type and life will be good. Alright, so that's good. One hour plus, I realized it's not as late as I thought it was. We'll see. We'll see how the afternoon goes, I guess. Anyway. So you know, I was thumbing through my news feeds today. And I saw a really interesting paper about bald eagles and contaminants and I was able to get the author's I think we're going to talk to him about what I'm hoping we'll see how it goes. What I'm hoping is kind of a success story, which would be nice, or at least a success story in progress, maybe with bald eagles and contaminants. And so I'm hoping that it is a good conversation. But you know, I've thought that before and ended up sad. So we'll see how it goes this time, but

Carolyn Foley 1:37
it'll be great.

Stuart Carlton 1:38
Anyway, so let's do some of the transitional music. And then we'll bring on our guests. Which one do we you know what, it's research isn't it? So here we go.

Researcher feature, a feature, which your researcher teaches about third grade. We really want to do some stuff where we're not embarrassing ourselves in front of our guests before it even starts. We need to make some changes here. I apologize for that. Our guest today is Bill rowdy, who used to be with the National Park Service. And now he's continuing on some of the work he was doing there. He's a wildlife biologist, and the author of a new paper in the journal Environmental Toxicology and chemistry the paper is called patterns and trends in Oh boy. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers in bald eagle nestlings in Minnesota and Wisconsin, USA. Bill, how are you today?

Bill Route 2:37
Very good. And very nice introduction. You got it all pronounced right?

Stuart Carlton 2:41
As we know, I am a professional but so our pronunciation was good. That's awesome. But why don't we start at the very beginning? What is a no no, no, I'm gonna screw it up Polybrominated diphenyl ether

Bill Route 2:54
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers, and you can just go short and call it PBD guns. It make it easier for all of us. But so these PBDE is our A family of chemicals. And there's up to 209 of them. And within that family of chemicals, there's what are called conjurers. And those conjures think of it as a species within a family. So these species, there's many of them. And these were brought onto the scene in about 2000 or 1970s. And they're human, Nate. So they're a form of chemicals that are used for mostly for flame retardants in plastics and foams and other products.

Stuart Carlton 3:47
Okay, and so they run on 1970s. And let's see, but but so what are these have to do with bald eagles? Exactly, that's where I'm getting lost here.

Bill Route 3:58
Sure, sure. So, um, so here's these chemicals that are in our you know, they're in our sofas. They're in our carpet. These are everywhere.

Stuart Carlton 4:09
Right? Like, right, okay.

Bill Route 4:12
Yes. You know, I mean, think about your your coffeemaker, the plastics, in your coffeemaker, the plastics in anything you have. These chemicals are stirred up into all of those products, and they help to make our products fire resistant. So you know, if you want a hot toaster to not burn up, you put in flame retardants. So these flame retardants are used in plastics. And of course, then there's there's the emissions from production of the product. There's the emissions from water waste going into our water supply system. When we clean our houses, and we flush the products down our sinks because we've washed our carpets or whatever, they get into the environment eventually They get into the water system. And the issue about these chemicals is that they're very highly persistent. And what that means is they do not break down. So they remain once they're produced, they just don't break down very easily. And then they accumulate up the food system. So if a fish in the water gets a little tiny bit of this chemical in their body, but then a larger fish eats that fish, and then a larger fish eats that small fish, and then eventually, a bald eagle eats that larger fish. And now you have what's called Bio accumulation of these contaminants. So what bald eagles help, what volleyballs help us do, is they help us show where these contaminants end up in these aquatic systems.

Carolyn Foley 5:57
And so in the bald eagle, so what are you sampling? Are you looking at their eggs or their feathers? Or their? Like, what? Which part of them? Are you looking to see where these chemicals are? Like, is it in their tissue or a particular tissue? I don't know if that's

Bill Route 6:14
right. Well, you could look at several different places, you could look at what the buildup is in their livers, or, you know, brain tissue or something like that. But what we wanted to do, because we're the National Park Service, and we like to see what's going on in our live populations of healthy animals. What we did was we went to the nestlings, so the little nestlings that are in our nest every spring, we climbed the tree, and plucked the nestling out of the nest, brought it down to the ground, weighed and you measured them, and then took a blood sample. So we actually took a needle just like you would give a blood sample in the hospital. And we grabbed a small sample of blood out of out of the brachial vein. And then we took that blood sample, and we brought it to a laboratory and analytical laboratory. And they can measure things down to parts per billion. And so then we can measure how much of this contaminant has accumulated in these nestlings across large areas.

Stuart Carlton 7:26
I see. And so so. So using this partially well, so I guess two things. So one, how much like was so the numbers parts were really and what what is like what is the rough number and parts per billion that we've seen over time? And then kind of the other thing, and you can talk about these however you want, I guess is you're using this as like a proxy, right for contaminant in the area. And so I'm interested in, like, what are the other effects of PBDs? Or what does this tell us about the environment in the area, I suppose?

Bill Route 7:52
Yeah, very good. Well, the levels, they won't be very meaningful to you because, you know, parts per billion. Suffice it to say that her in the early days, when we started monitoring, they were at levels that were similar to PCBs, which were banned in the early 1970s, because of their toxic effects. And by the way, these chemicals are very similar to one another. So PBDs, which we're talking about today, are very similar in their chemical structure as PCBs, which were banned in the 1970s. So lo and behold, they have some of the same effects. You know, they're, they're what's called hormone disruptors. So they disrupt the thyroid system in the immune system. You know, there's been a number of research efforts done on different animals to find out that they, they do, in fact, cause problems. And they are of concern. And so that's why they've been banned. So they, they've now been pretty much banned, internationally. And they started to be reduced in the early 2000s. And so what we wanted to do was see what is the effect of this ban? Have they been removed from the system? Are they slowly slowly moving out of these otter these aquatic systems, and we're using the bald eagle as a proxy, as you say, it's a very good word for it. And in fact, the you know, what we want to know is because we as humans also feed out of these aquatic systems, right? We eat the fish, we drink the water. We're really using the bald eagle as a model to say that if they have it, then we probably have it too.

Carolyn Foley 9:44
So So what do you think do they have it? Do we have

Bill Route 9:48
it? Yeah, we do. And, and of course, the good news is that we we monitored across the state of Wisconsin pretty much from from the Apostle Islands up on Lake Superior, down in Lake Michigan, you know, outside of Green Bay and the Wisconsin River or the Fox River, the St. Croix River and along the Mississippi River, so a large swath of, of Wisconsin into Minnesota. And what we found was that these contaminants have, in fact declined pretty much since they were taken off the market in the early 2000s. And there's been a consistent year after year decline have something in the neighborhood of three to 6%, depending on which one it is different, conjures, you know, species of chemical that you're looking at. So they have, overall they've declined. And

Stuart Carlton 10:47
so so that's yeah. And so is that decline? I guess, it's just because as a bio, accumulate up the food chain, or whatever, and those animals die for lack of a better term, the PBDs? Like, could they just go away? Or did the little microbes eat? And what even what even happens?

Bill Route 11:02
Right? Well, that's a really good question. And we don't know exactly all of the fate of these chemicals, we know that they're very highly persistent. So they don't break down very easily. But eventually, they do break down to some, you know, to some extent, and so what we're, you know, what we feel is that they are slowly breaking down, and slowly being removed from the system. Or some of them are just simply going into sediments and, and becoming deposits in the sediments, bottom sediments in lakes and streams, and they're just not bioavailable to all Eagles or to us. So in a way, they're sequestered into the system.

Stuart Carlton 11:44
Is that something? Obviously we don't know? Is that something that you think might be a future concern? If we have like these dumps full of pee pee, BB ease? Or is that maybe Okay, out of sight out of mind?

Bill Route 11:56
No, it is, it is a concern, for sure. Because, as landfills leak, and they do, you know, we build really good landfills, we try to bind them. But as, as these things break down, you know, we got Styrofoam, and we got all kinds of textile products and stuff like that in these landfills. And as they slowly break down and leach out of these landfills, they do leak into the system. So we believe that it'll be a continual problem for, you know, decades and decades. But, you know, the good news is that they are slowly declining, at least they're not increasing. The other interesting thing is that some of these contain some of these species of PBDs get into the bottom sediments, and micro organisms tend to break them down and create other PBDE is one of them so so they transform to some degree, and they actually transform from the least toxic down to the more toxic Oh, because there is some potential that we are reducing some of the what are called the higher brominated flame retardants, and we're bringing them down to lower brunette flame retardants. There are fewer of them, but they are more toxic. But so a lot of work needs to be done to figure that out yet. But still, as I say, the good news is that they

Stuart Carlton 13:25
know that it is good news, and I'll put my plug in here. So the answer and they currently can go. So the answer is we need to fund scientists to do more work. We say this about every every second episode, so I just gotta say, I currently

Carolyn Foley 13:35
go. Okay, so I want to go back a little bit to you know, you describing the methods that you did that you climbed up the tree, and you pulled the animal out. And you know, the little eagle or the little egullet Yes, sorry.

Stuart Carlton 13:55
Needle, but anyway, go ahead. Yeah.

Carolyn Foley 13:58
So you have training, originally as a wildlife biologist, and then you sort of turn toxicologists a little bit, which skills that you had as a wildlife biologist transferred well to the work that you did in this paper and otherwise?

Bill Route 14:17
Yeah, well, as a wildlife biologist, in many of the years that I've done this, I've handled a lot of different wildlife. And so handling wildlife I guess, is expertise or a part of the picture that that I felt I was best at. And so the physically handling the animal, we didn't give them any drugs. They were you know, totally, you know, on drugged in any way So, it takes a little bit of a skill to make sure that you know what, these are about 10 pound. Head nestlings these are not small Robins, you know, these are bald eagles, and they're they're eight to 10 pounds. And, you know, sometimes they're pretty feisty, they can use their, their talents and their beaks to to do great harm to you unless you handle them correctly. And of course, you don't want to hurt them either. So, so my skill was, was mostly in the early days in the actual handling of the animals. And, and then in terms of the toxicology, I had a huge learning curve. And but it was fun. It was a very interesting project. Right?

Carolyn Foley 15:34
I appreciate that. Because one of the things that I think I've sort of found is, you know, you have young scientists who get really enamored with being ecologist or biologists and then they have to transfer to something else like I, a whole bunch of people that I know who started out in like aquatic invasive species, now they do water quality, because that's what people are kind of more interested. Thanks for

Stuart Carlton 15:57
some people starting to get like a master's in fisheries biology and then become social scientists and go from there to being a paper pusher. So every direction, so Alright, one more question. A lot of the paper pushing. A big portion of science is pushing paper, I think, or at least science in the real world. So I have one question, I have to ask for Angie sake. And then and then we'll move on to our ended questions. And that is this. So the little eagles, are they going to be okay with all these PBDs? Or does it? Does it affect them? Or do they seem as far as you can tell, to not have a significant quality of life change as a result of this?

Bill Route 16:32
As far as we could tell, there was no population level effects. So, you know, but we weren't really looking at that, mostly, we were looking at the patterns of their distribution of these chemicals. So we didn't design the study to look to see whether or not these nestlings are in any way behaviorally affected. Had, we wanted to do that you would have to probably, you know, watch them behaviorally to see if they change at all. But then usually, what you have to do is give them different quantities, ranging from a very light quality to a very high dose and see whether that affects them. And that wasn't part of it to do. So we could not see any population level effects, but we really didn't look at them.

Stuart Carlton 17:22
And that makes sense. But so the story, then let me make sure I get the story of the paper. And then Yep, so So PBDs, they come from flame retardants or fire or fire protective chemicals. And the levels were fairly high, but then they've been banned for most of this century. And so now they seem to be slowly breaking down. But we don't know exactly, or the they seem to be disappearing from the bald eagle population anyway, and therefore maybe the areas where they are, and we're not sure what the long term effects of that are. Right? Is that kind of a good one Senate summary of your story here.

Bill Route 18:01
Sure, yeah. I think that's a good summary. I think I would I would hasten to, to throw in there, though, that even though these have declined, the industry is always looking for ways to replace the chemicals that they have to reduce. So what happens is that chemicals like these suddenly became known to be persistent and toxic. And so they were then either directly regulated, or EPA or somebody just through, you know, really a request or, you know, negotiation. They have, you know, taken them off the market, but then they have to replace them with something else. And, you know, what we have to be vigilant for I think, as people as to is to be supportive of regulations, for one thing, research into these kinds of things. And into green chemistry, or lack of chemicals. In order to get the same things that we we need. So, there are ways to to formulate chemicals that break down quickly. And we need to make sure that we're trying to do that. Because what happens even though these are declining, there is a mixture of chemicals out there in the environment. And we don't know how they play with each other. You know, right now there's something somewhere around 88,000 chemicals that are released into the environment. And so even very, very small quantities mixed with one other chemical might be hazardous to someone's health. And if some individual just happens to get a large dose of one chemical or the other. You know, some of these things, we just don't know how it affects people.

Stuart Carlton 19:57
Well, this is a really interesting bill. It sounds like important work. And I'm glad to hear that it does seem like at least something some trend is down. But that's actually not the reason that we invited you here on teach me about the Great Lakes today. The reason that we invited you to take part of teaching, we have three lakes ask you two questions. First question is, if you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast, or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose?

Bill Route 20:23
Well, I think it depends on, on what I get to have along with, okay, if there's a really good cup of coffee with that doughnut, then I might go with the donut. But if there's a really good beer to go with the sandwich I might go with There you

Stuart Carlton 20:42
go. You're more choosing based on the beverage than on the food item.

So where are you based out of I forgot to ask I'm sorry. Pass on those guys. That's your national ID. Alright, so when I'm in national Wisconsin, normally I'd ask Where can I go to get a good sandwich for just where you know what we're cutting through that? I don't even care. Where can I go nationally to get a good beer?

Bill Route 21:06
Oh, the South Shore brewery, South Shore brewery

Stuart Carlton 21:09
Done and done. Is that South Shore as in the south shore of the lake?

Bill Route 21:15
Shore of Lake Superior? They use Lake Superior water to make a nut brown ale that is very good.

Stuart Carlton 21:21
Okay, future episode. Got it and got it. Good. And so then the second question is this. So you're a wildlife biologist by training and you worked at the National Park Service for a long time. One thing we're interested in is like what makes people good at their jobs? Right? Because I think that that's, that's always good to hear. So what is it that you makes you that makes you good at being a wildlife biologist? What are the key skills or traits do you think?

Bill Route 21:46
Well, I think just, I really care about the environment and care about wildlife. I enjoyed working with various species of wildlife and asking questions about why they, they they do what they do. I've been inquisitive about populations and how populations change, and how our environment around us has changed. And I'm particularly enjoyed handling wildlife, although I think more and more, it's important that we find non invasive ways to monitor without without actually handling them.

Stuart Carlton 22:23
Excellent. Well, Bill, rowdy, author of an interesting paper, I will put a link to the paper in our show notes so that everybody can go and check it out. This is really good work. And we appreciate everything you're doing. Thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes. Well, thanks for asking. Yeah.

It's always good to hear it's always good to hear a, you know, some environmental good news. It was a little caveat, but but it was still nice to hear, I think.

Carolyn Foley 23:03
Yeah, I think it's an important caveat, though. Because, you know, the point that Bill made that we like, there's always going to be another chemical to replace the product like the use. I think that's extremely important.

Stuart Carlton 23:17
Yeah, I remember. Yeah. When when BPA BPA, BPA became a thing like it disappeared overnight from like, kids bottles and stuff. But it's been replaced by other things. And I think that there's some thought that maybe they're you know, they're kind of ugly as well. So, yeah, I hear you. It's always worth remembering about, but still, it's good news. It's good. And so it's nice to hear good news, I think.

Carolyn Foley 23:39
Yeah, it is. I also really, really enjoyed. So I guess we should note that this paper that we're talking about today, it's an open access paper. So we'll have a link to it. There are some really cool maps looking at where they actually did the sampling and things like that. So we'll post that the link to that paper and maybe a couple of other papers, too. That may be of interest. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 24:00
those will be good in the show notes. Yeah,

Carolyn Foley 24:02
absolutely. Sure. And where are the show notes?

Stuart Carlton 24:05
But hold on. Oh, sorry, this thing. It's always Oh, message. Oh, oh. Oh, all right. Great. Well, let's just go ahead and play that I suppose. We got a caller and says a caller to our new teacher about the Great Lakes hotline. Have I told you about this?

Carolyn Foley 24:26
You haven't.

Stuart Carlton 24:29
We have a tizzy about the Great Lakes hotline Carolyn, anybody who wants to can call in Area code 765496. I SG for Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. And looks like we got a message here. We're asking people to call and tell us kind of the story of the Great Lakes in 2020 and 2021. You know, so like last year, a lot of people's relationship with lakes changed. And you know, maybe the things they missed about the lakes or maybe, you know, maybe actually a lot of people enjoy the time in nature in a way They hadn't before. So we're interested in you calling and telling us about it looks like we have a message from uh oh, this is from the great Meghan, it says right here. So let's just go ahead and play it.

Megan Gunn 25:10
Hi, this is Megan, first time caller, longtime listener. My relationship with the Great Lakes changed in 2020, by me having greater greater appreciation for them. I think not being able to go and explore and, and being stuck at home just made me want to go and explore more. And so I had a lot of reading time and a lot of listening to teach me about the Great Lakes and other podcast to learn more. And that's how, that's how I feel that nit, but in 2021, I'm really hoping to go and visit one of the shipwrecks that we that we talked about in one of the episodes, because I think that that would be so cool to go diving on one of those wrecks. And that's it.

Stuart Carlton 25:55
There you go. Well, thank you to the great Meghan for calling in. And she sounded a little bit familiar, I think but that's a tiny bit. Yeah. But hey, do you have a great life story? If so, give us a call. 765496 I SG that's 4474 Operators are standing by actually they're not but it's a voicemail. Thanks, so called leave a voicemail. And maybe we'll play it on here. Yep. Anyway, well, this has been a fun episode. But where can people go to find out more about the awesome work that we do at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant,

Carolyn Foley 26:25
that'll get Illinois.

Stuart Carlton 26:28
bronze look said when he first got the job as the Football Coach of the University of Illinois. I happen to know he called it Illinois anyway, where can they go?

Carolyn Foley 26:38
All right, they can go to our website I see grant.org C spelled as the SCA not the letter C. You can also find us on social media at il i NSEAGRANT. I believe we are on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram. And there are also other podcasts too and many of our staff members are on Twitter do

Stuart Carlton 27:03
that's right just go follow everybody do everything and in between on and Carolyn, so good to talk to you have a wonderful weekend. crack open a nice cold South Side brewery brew. Or if that's not true,

Carolyn Foley 27:16
and it's on Lake Superior to I mean, imagine Oh see, that's where I want to be I want to answer that question. I want to be sitting on the shoreline of Lake Superior drinking something delicious.

Stuart Carlton 27:26
I agree but call the hotline and leave that message. Don't tell me that now. I'm not interested. And

Carolyn Foley 27:33
I don't want to hear about it.

Stuart Carlton 27:35
It is not in the hotlines. 765496 is for you. That's 4474 I don't want to hear anybody. Anyway. Great. Well between now and then everybody gives off a cold beverage whatever that may be. Some lemonade would be nice. Please fix me a large slice either way. Keep grading those lakes. A job

oh my god, I'm almost crying.