Benzotriazole UV-stabilizer exposure in ring-billed gulls from an urban, freshwater harbour in Lake Ontario, Canada: evaluating contaminant bioaccumulation and potential health impacts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Plastic-associated contaminants, including benzotriazole UV-stabilizers (BZT-UVs), are receiving increased attention due to their environmental persistence, long-range transport, and potential to induce biological toxicity. However, little data is available regarding bioaccumulation and potential health impacts secondary to chronic BZT-UVs exposure in wildlife. We investigated the accumulation of 13 plastic-associated contaminants, including nine BZT-UVs, in 75 ring-billed gull (RBGU; Larus delawarensis) eggs collected in 2022 from the Hamilton Harbour in Lake Ontario, Canada. We evaluated the relationships between BZT-UVs exposure, gull body condition, trophic level, and renal and hepatic blood biochemistry variables. We detected at least one contaminant in 96 % of eggs, at least one BZT-UVs in 94.7 % of eggs, and UV328 in 92 % of eggs. We compared our results with American herring gull (Larus argentatus smithsonianus) eggs collected from the Hamilton Harbour in 2014 and detected a significantly higher concentration of UV328 in our samples. We found no impact of trophic level on UV328 egg concentrations in our study population based on stable isotope analysis, and we did not detect a significant relationship between UV328 and female gull body condition. A significant positive relationship was identified between egg UV328 and uric acid concentrations in female RBGU, suggesting a possible relationship between UV328 exposure and impaired renal function in this population. No other relationships were identified between UV328 burden and selected hepatic biochemistry analytes. RBGU at this location are highly exposed to BZT-UVs, and RBGU eggs represent a non-invasive method for long-term monitoring of plastic-associated contaminants and their potential impacts.
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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) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".