Inhaling Benzene, Toluene, Nitrogen Dioxide, and Sulfur Dioxide, Disrupts Thyroid Function in Captive American Kestrels (<i>Falco sparverius</i>)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Research investigating the effects of air contaminants on biota has been limited to date. Captive adult female American kestrels ( Falco sparverius ) were exposed to a mixture of benzene (0.6 ppm), toluene (1 ppm), nitrogen dioxide (NO 2; 2 ppm) and sulfur dioxide (SO 2; 5.6 ppm), in a whole-body inhalation chamber. Thyroid axis responses to meet metabolic demands were examined through thyroid histology, plasma thyroxine (T 4 ), and triiodothyronine (T 3 ), and hepatic outer ring deiodination (T 4 -ORD). Plasma free (F) T 3 and T 4 were measured at baseline, and at 9 days and 18 days of exposure, whereas total (T) T 3 and TT 4, thyroid histology and hepatic T 4 -ORD were determined at the final 18 day exposure. Inhalation of these contaminants significantly suppressed plasma FT 4 and TT 4, and depleted follicular colloid and increased epithelial cell height at 18 days, and significantly altered the temporal pattern of plasma FT 4 . Significant histological changes in the follicular colloid:epithelial cell height ratio indicated sustained T 4 production and release by the thyroid glands. There was no effect on plasma FT 3, TT 3, or hepatic T 4 -ORD. We hypothesize that contaminant-related activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid axis in the kestrels increased elimination of plasma T 4 through Phase II enzymes. Further research is required to test this hypothesis in wild birds.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".