Plastic, as a form of marine litter, is found in varying quantities and sizes around the globe from surface waters to deep-sea sediments. Identifying patterns of microplastic distribution will benefit an understanding of the scale of their potential effect on the environment and organisms. As sea ice extent is reducing in the Arctic, heightened shipping and fishing activity may increase marine pollution in the area. Microplastics may enter the region following ocean transport and local input, although baseline contamination measurements are still required.

The Bahía Blanca Estuary, located at the Atlantic coast of Argentina, includes a governmental nature reserve to protect biodiversity, lands and water; however, as the process of industrialization and urbanization is stepping rapidly at the neighbouring area, the potential increase in contaminant loads is a serious concern. After several contaminants surveys at the estuary, no single study has been yet performed in order to study the native mussels population assemblages vs.

This Executive Summary to the Endocrine Society’s second Scientific Statement on environmental endocrinedisrupting chemicals (EDCs) provides a synthesis of the key points of the complete statement. The full Scientific Statement represents a comprehensive review of the literature on seven topics for which there is strong mechanistic, experimental, animal, and epidemiological evidence for endocrine disruption, namely: obesity and diabetes, female reproduction, male reproduction, hormone-sensitive cancers in females, prostate cancer, thyroid, and neurodevelopment and neuroendocrine systems.

Effects of pathogens on host life-history characteristics can be influenced by changes in the immune system that occur during development as well as by environmental factors that negatively affect immune system function. Amphibians worldwide are experiencing population declines from chytridiomycosis caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Disease outbreaks can be influenced by timing of exposure to B. dendrobatidis and by abiotic factors, such as pesticides, that could influence susceptibility. To examine the effects of larval pesticide exposure and timing of B.

Hydraulic fracturing technologies, developed over the last 65 years, have only recently been combined with horizontal drilling to unlock oil and gas reserves previously deemed inaccessible. While these technologies have dramatically increased domestic oil and natural gas production, they have also raised concerns for the potential contamination of local water supplies with the approximately 1,000 chemicals used throughout the process, including many known or suspected endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Glacial episodes have been linked to Ordovician–Silurian extinction events, but cooling itself may not be solely responsible for these extinctions. Teratological (malformed) assemblages of fossil plankton that correlate precisely with the extinction events can help identify alternate drivers of extinction. Here we show that metal poisoning may have caused these aberrant morphologies during a late Silurian (Pridoli) event. Malformations coincide with a dramatic increase of metals (Fe, Mo, Pb, Mn and As) in the fossils and their host rocks.