How birds of prey are exposing a toxic time bomb | Pollution

Rui Lourenço first started collecting feathers because they were beautiful. Below the birds’ cliff-side nests in rural Portugal, he would find their shed feathers and bring them back to his ecology lab at the University of Évora. “It was just the typical curiosity of a naturalist,” he says. “Especially the flight feathers, they’re large, they’re soft, they have really interesting patterns.”

One day, a colleague asked if she could check them for toxic chemicals. As top predators, raptors’ concentration of chemicals is particularly high due to a . . .