For the first time, a researcher (Dan Cristol, College of William and Mary), has shown that animals do not have to consume large predatory fish to get exposed to mercury. Songbirds in the Shenandoah watershed had high concentrations of methylmercury in their blood because they consume spiders as a primary food source.

Read more about this study and how Quicksilver Scientific mercury speciation analysis contributed.

Read the abstract online.

Look up the paper in Science.

Cristol, D. et al. (2008) “The Movement of Aquatic Mercury Through Terrestrial Food Webs” in Science. Vol. 320, No. 5874: p.335.