PORTLAND (AP) – North Atlantic right whales are carrying high levels of industrial pollutants that could be slowing their recovery rates, according to University of Southern Maine researchers.

USM’s Maine Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health said Friday that it has found chromium in right whales at levels that could be slowing reproduction.

The study is a reminder that the whales are vulnerable to pollution, in addition to more obvious threats such as fishing gear entanglements and collisions with ships.

The center took skin and blubber samples from seven whales and found chromium levels at an average of about 7 parts per million, well above the 0.3 parts per million found in the average person.

John Wise, founder of the research center and lead author of the report, said he believes the whales are exposed to chromium through the air.

“I don’t see how you get levels this high in skin without breathing it in,” Wise said. “The whales are close enough to shore that they’re getting essentially urban air coming off land. They suck in a lot more air than we do, so we’re thinking air pollution may be a bigger hazard than we ever thought about for whales.”

The right whale is the world’s rarest large whale, with only 300 or so remaining. The whales migrate each year between Florida and the Gulf of Maine.

Right whale birth rates dropped in the 1980s and 1990s to a handful of calves each spring. Births have climbed back up to at least 15 a year in recent years, but the swings in birth rates suggest there are environmental factors at work.

Chromium, a common pollutant in ocean sediment, is discharged from metal-finishing, leather tanning and textile dyeing industries and is also found in stainless steel, dyes and paints.

USM researchers used cell lines developed in the lab from right whale tissues and organs to test the biological effects of the pollution. “We found that chromium does damage DNA in the testes and the lung,” Wise said. “If it can damage DNA, then it can impair reproduction.”

USM’s findings have been peer reviewed and are scheduled to be published in a scientific journal soon, the school said.

Scott Kraus, vice president of research at the New England Aquarium in Boston, has long believed that pollution and disease are playing a role in the right whale’s struggle. He is co- editor of the book “The Urban Whale: North Atlantic Right Whales at the Crossroads.”

“Since right whales tend to swim within 50 miles of shore, they’re breathing our off-gases and swimming through our effluent,” he said. “They live in our leach field.”

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Information from: Portland Press Herald, http://www.pressherald.com

AP-ES-11-04-07 1115EST

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