Columns::Researchers test less lethal means to find contamination levels

since 12/15/98

Columns::September 8, 2003

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Campus News

Researchers test less lethal means to find contamination levels

By Rosemary Forrest
forrest@srel.edu

When scientists need to determine how much of a contaminant in an environment actually remains in the animals that live there, traditionally they have had to sacrifice test animals to collect tissue for contaminant level testing. According to a paper published in Environmental Science & Technology, scientists at the UGA’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory have used a technique called laser ablation-ICP-MS to sample minute sections of an animal’s tail without sacrificing the animal.
SREL scientists Brian Jackson, William Hopkins and Jennifer Baionno used the banded water snake (Nerodia fasciata), a common nonvenomous species, as the test animal. Using a control group as well as two groups that were fed fish containing varying levels of arsenic, selenium and strontium, the scientists compared data from such traditional testing methods as whole tail concentration by homogenization, acid digestion and ICP-MS analysis with nonlethal samples.
“Taken together, the findings from this study suggest that laser ablation of micro-dissected tissue shows promise as a nondestructive technique for conservation-minded eco-toxicological studies,” says Jackson.

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