Previous research has investigated the presence of heavy metals in hedgehogs from other urban areas in Europe and found similarly elevated levels of heavy metals. However, the team weren’t expecting so many other pollutants.
“What surprised us was that there were so many different environmental pollutants in the animals, such as PCBs and several different phthalates, and that there were very high concentrations of certain heavy metals, especially lead,” says Maria Hansson, ecotoxicologist at Lund University, BECC-PI and the person who initiated the study.
The Lund researchers are, to their knowledge, the first to find evidence of hedgehog exposure to PAHs, phthalates and pesticides through analyses of liver tissue.
Noëlie Molbert, formerly a postdoctoral researcher at CEC, is the first author of the article and contributed to the study.
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The article is published in full on Lund University's website:
Surprising number of environmental pollutants in hedgehogs | Lund University