"Top Polluted Great Lakes Sites Decades From Recovery"

"Despite huge progress made in reducing chemical discharges since the 1960s, many birds nesting across the Great Lakes region still struggle to reproduce or they give birth to chicks with twisted beaks or other deformities — signs that a full recovery is still likely decades away for some of the region’s most historically polluted areas.

One such area identified during a 90-minute panel discussion at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2015 Areas of Concern Conference at the University of Toledo was the River Raisin, where it empties into western Lake Erie near Monroe.

Keith Grasman, a biologist at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., who has been studying bird and animal deformities and reproductive problems, said research done during the past five years on herring gulls shows that problems persist there and in Michigan’s Saginaw Bay.

Both were among the hottest spots for cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and dioxins in years past, he said."

Tom Henry reports for the Toledo Blade March 12, 2015.