Western pond turtles found to be exposed to pesticides in Sequoia National Park

Western pond turtles in Sequoia National Park and other California remote wildlands have been exposed to an assortment of agricultural and industrial contaminants, according to a study from the National Park Service and the University of California, Davis.

In the study, published online in the journal Chemosphere, scientists sampled for 57 compounds, including pesticides, in turtles, invertebrates, and sediments from three sites: Sequoia National Park, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, and Six Rivers National Forest.
None of the turtles at any of the sites carried pesticides currently in use, only those used in previous decades. However, both current pesticides and those used in the past were prominent in sediments and in the insects, snails and mollusks that turtles eat at Sequoia National Park, which is immediately downwind of Central Valley agriculture.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-04-western-pond-turtles-exposed-pesticides.html#jCp