Toxicity and Tolerance to Heavy Metals. II. Animals

Abstract

Some of the earliest field studies of the effects of heavy metal mining on the freshwater fauna were performed by Kathleen Carpenter (1924, 1926) in the rivers of mid-Wales. These are interesting in their own right but are made more so by studies documenting subsequent changes (e.g. Jones, 1940, 1958) which make this area one of the most important case studies of freshwater heavy metal pollution in the literature. When Carpenter made her first studies some of the lead mines were still operational and others had only recently closed and the state of the streams must have been little different to when the mines were operational; thus there are records of the state of these rivers covering some sixty years.