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Writer's picturePaige

Science! - Dioxin and Furan Sensitivity in Birds

Okay, the number of people who know or care about this is vanishingly small, but I think it's cool and useful.

Essentially, birds have three types of dioxin sensitivity, high sensitivity (hello chickens!), intermediate sensitivity (pheasants), and low sensitivity (most seabirds). This is not news.

BUT Farmahin 2012 and Hwang 2016 ran genetics on dozens of species to figure out who goes into which group. Many of these are the birds I use as models at hazardous waste cleanup sites. It would be good to know if I have a low-sensitivity bird at my site. Most of the toxicity values are from medium- or high-sensitivity lab animals and will incorrectly overpredict actual risk to lower sensitivity birds.




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