{"id":7639,"date":"2025-06-16T15:21:42","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T21:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/?p=7639"},"modified":"2025-06-16T15:21:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T21:21:42","slug":"museums-hold-secrets-of-a-polluted-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/2025\/06\/16\/museums-hold-secrets-of-a-polluted-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Museums Hold Secrets of a Polluted Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlocking the Secrets of Museum Specimens<\/h1>\n

As a graduate student working out of Chicago\u2019s Field Museum of Natural History, evolutionary biologist Shane DuBay noticed soot clinging to the bird specimens he handled. Like many researchers, he long regarded these collections kept by museums as windows into biodiversity. But that moment made him wonder if bird feathers could also map the historic arc of industrial pollution.<\/p>\n

Now an assistant professor of biology at the University of Texas at Arlington, DuBay is advocating for scientists to consider using museum specimens as tools for public health and environmental research. He and fellow scientists at the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Yale University and the University of Wisconsin published a perspective last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailing the need to view museum specimens in a new light.<\/p>\n

The Underutilized Resource<\/h2>\n

\u201cThe ideas in this paper aren\u2019t necessarily new,\u201d said DuBay. \u201cWe\u2019ve known that specimens can be used in this way for decades. Part of what we\u2019re trying to argue in this perspective piece is that [museum specimens] are an incredibly underutilized resource. One of the great examples is with DDT, which is an insecticide. Eggshells were used [from] museum collections to understand DDT\u2019s impacts on bird population and human health through the 1960s.\u201d<\/p>\n

One hurdle in tracking historic pollution trends is the lack of data for many places or periods of time. Even if official monitoring is available, as it is in the present day, it usually begins once a contaminant is already known to be dangerous and widespread, according to the perspective.<\/p>\n

Breaking News<\/h2>\n

Get the latest breaking news from North Texas and beyond.<\/p>\n

Evolutionary biologist Shane DuBay is an assistant professor of biology at the University of Texas at Arlington.(UT Arlington)<\/span><\/p>\n

Filling in the Gaps<\/h2>\n

By tapping into these museum archives, DuBay said, it\u2019s possible to fill in the missing chapters of an area or region\u2019s pollution history, which can help compare the past to the present and see the long-term links between an environment and public health.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the big advantages of museum work is there\u2019s already been so much time, energy and money put into these collections over the last 100-plus years,\u201d DuBay said. \u201cThese samples exist and are being preserved for posterity, so they are a resource that\u2019s already there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Case Studies<\/h3>\n

In 2017, DuBay and Carl Fuldner, then a fellow graduate student at the University of Chicago, examined soot on more than 1,300 songbird specimens from across America\u2019s Rust Belt. They discovered the grubbiest feathers dated back to the first decade of the 20th century. By the time of the Great Depression and after, soot levels on songbirds dropped, mirroring the country\u2019s shift to natural gas for heating homes. These findings suggest air quality at the turn of the century was far worse than previously thought.<\/p>\n

Exactly what type of museum specimen is optimal for tracking a pollutant\u2019s history depends on the pollutant, said DuBay. For example, a 2015 study found mercury levels in ivory gulls\u2019 feathers increased almost 50-fold since the 1800s, likely due to human activity such as coal burning, which releases mercury into the environment. In another study, from 2021, researchers turned to museum fish collections to trace the rise of microplastic pollution. Analyzing specimens from 1900 to 2017 and comparing them with fish specimens collected in 2018, they found no plastic particles in fish guts before the 1950s, but concentrations shot up dramatically once industrial plastic production took off and continued to climb.<\/p>\n

Methodology and Limitations<\/h3>\n

\u201cI would say there is a lot of biology in being able to do this type of work and understanding the strengths and limitations of the specimens themselves and the species being used for any given study,\u201d DuBay said. \u201cOne of the things we\u2019re trying to argue is there\u2019s still a lot of work to be done in understanding the limitations of what we can and can\u2019t do and the certainty and uncertainty of this method.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HistoricalHistorical bird samples from a museum collection.(Shane DuBay and Carl Fuldner)<\/span><\/p>\n

Current Research and Future Directions<\/h2>\n

DuBay and his team of researchers are currently working with the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, evaluating its bird specimens for different pollutants.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the Ph.D. students in my group is at the Perot scanning the leg bones of hundreds of birds for toxic metal contaminants,\u201d he said. \u201cHer focus is on North Texas, primarily Dallas [County] and Tarrant County, the thousands of specimens that exist from this region over the last hundred years and trying to reconstruct lead pollution [and] mercury pollution histories.\u201d<\/p>\n

DuBay said the scanning uses a noninvasive X-ray technique that leaves museum bones unharmed. He admits that worries about damaging precious specimens may discourage researchers from tapping into collections for environmental studies. Still, he hopes his lab\u2019s research \u2014 and that of other pioneers in the field \u2014 will persuade colleagues to dust off their local archives in search of pollution clues.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

Unlocking the Secrets of Museum Specimens As a graduate student working out of Chicago\u2019s Field Museum of Natural History, evolutionary biologist Shane DuBay noticed soot clinging to the bird specimens he handled. Like many researchers, he long regarded these collections kept by museums as windows into biodiversity. But that moment made him wonder if bird […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":7640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com\/resizer\/v2\/XFNP4MTZBRUVT2TLU4YPJJIWOA.jpg?auth=0292a49fcf74ed51b26f4f1f9bb1cdfcde873d328caafa9d2fde953e32ca0437&height=630&width=1200&smart=true&quality=80","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7641,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7639\/revisions\/7641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}