While several bans and policies have offered some protection, the same chemicals threatening these birds 60 years ago continue to accumulate in their bodies—and new chemical threats are adding to their toxic burdens, according to two new studies.

The two studies add to evidence that pollutants not only persist in the Great Lakes, but continue to travel up food chains to reach and endanger apex predators; and suggest that birds in the Great Lakes continue to impart toxic loads to their offspring—results that do not bode well for long-term bird populations.

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Birds were dying at lakes and reservoirs throughout the southeast, and at every lake Susan Wilde, an aquatic ecologist at the University of Georgia, Athens and team visited, they found Hydrilla verticillate. But it was not the hydrilla itself causing the deaths, it was cyanobacteria on the leaves.

A team of researchers have identified a novel neurotoxin produced by cyanobacteria that harms not just birds, but fish, insects, and worms too. An unusual feature of the toxic molecule is the presence of bromine, which is scarce in lakes and rarely found in cyanobacteria.

Bromides are rare in freshwater, but they could be eroding from rocks, or they might originate from coal-fired power plants. Other sources could include brominated flame retardants, fracking fluids, and road salt. Wilde suspects one local source might be an herbicide, diquat dibromide, that is used to kill hydrilla.

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