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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Polar ice chronicles a toxic metal’s surging production

Samples from the Arctic track rising and falling levels of lead over two millennia.
Ice core drilling on the Greenland Ice Sheet

Research team member Callie McConnell collects a core of Greenland ice, which helps to chart the ebb and flow of economic activity from 200 BC to the present. Credit: Joe McConnell

A detailed history of lead pollution’s drift into the Arctic is written in the region’s ice, which records spikes of contamination during periods of intense silver mining, and lower levels during plagues and famines.

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Nature 571, 301 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02124-3

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