Lead Aerosol Pollution in the High Sierra Overrides Natural Mechanisms Which Exclude Lead from a Food Chain
- Creators
- Hirao, Yoshimitsu
- Patterson, Clair C.
Abstract
Most of the lead contained in sedge and voles (mountain meadow mice) within one of the most pristine, remote valleys in the United States is not natural but came from smelter fumes and gasoline exhausts. In a food chain, natural mechanisms do not allow lead to accompany the bulk of the nutritive metals as they proceed to higher trophic levels. This exclusion can be expressed quantitatively by a comparison of lead/calcium ratios at successive trophic levels. This ratio decreased by an overall factor of 200 in proceeding from rock, to soil moisture, to sedge, to vole. This factor would have been 1200 if lead aerosols had not collected on sedge leaves and circtumvented the tendency by sedge to exclude lead from the nutritive metals it absorbed from soil moisture.
Additional Information
© 1974 American Association for the Advancement of Science. 5 December 1973; revised 20 February 1974. We thank T. Hinkley and D, Settle (California Institute of Technology) for field and laboratory assistance; S. Frie.dlander and J. Huntziker (Caltech) and T. J. Chow (University of California, San Diego) for help on aerosol deposition studies; B. Brattstrom and J. D. Smith (California State University, Fullerton), C. Sharsmith (California State University, San Jose), and J. L. Patton (University of California, Berkeley) for assistance in animal and plant collections and identifications; A. J. Brown (California Department of Water Resources for use of snow survey samplers; and S. Wood (Caltech) and W. D. Nettleton (University of California, Riverside) for assistance and advice in soil analysis. Details of analytical procedures and clean-room techniques can be obtained from C.C.P. This work was supported by National Science Foundation grant GB-31038 (Division of Biology and Medicine, General Ecology) and by Rockefeller Foundation grant RF 72049.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 62071
- DOI
- 10.1126/science.184.4140.989
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20151112-115905538
- GB-31038
- NSF
- RF 72049
- Rockefeller Foundation
- Created
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2015-11-13Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field