Lund researchers who analyzed dead hedgehogs found eleven different elements, including several heavy metals, and 48 organic environmental pollutants.
"An analysis of hedgehogs gives us a kind of environmental fingerprint of what exists in an area's ecosystem," says ecotoxicologist Maria Hansson in a press release from Lund University.
The hedgehogs provide a unique insight into which environmental pollutants we have around us, she believes. The tags, teeth, and liver tissue of the dead hedgehogs that the public helped collect were analyzed.
High levels of the heavy metal lead and several different organic environmental chemicals, such as phthalates, which are used as softeners in plastic and rubber, were found here. Similarly, PCB, which has been banned from use in new products since the 1970s, was also found.
What surprised the researchers was that the hedgehogs had so many different environmental pollutants in them. The study does not provide an answer to how they are affected by the toxins.
The result has been published in the scientific journal Environmental Pollution.
