ABSTRACT
For evaluating health effects to ecological receptors from contaminant exposures, the normative practice is to conduct all work in the laboratory. Under rigidly fixed ambient conditions, commercially reared organisms are placed into artificial containers, unnaturally dosed, or fed artificially amended/tainted diets for a period of several weeks. The small rodent is the only mammal that can regularly be culled from the field, and for which obtaining IACUC permissions proceeds smoothly. In the main, the study does not involve culling animals from the field per se, but rather strategically relocating them. With sound purpose to the work, well-written study protocols to pave the way for the subject study to proceed stand to be readily accepted. The specific premise is straightforward enough: to collect small rodents of non-contaminated areas and to place them at contaminated sites. And then the reverse: to remove small rodents from contaminated sites and situate them in appropriate contaminant-free zones. Undeniably, this study necessitates an engineering feat.
