In guillemot eggs from the Swedish island Stora Karlsö, PFOS increased significantly from 25 ng/g ww in 1968 to 614 ng/g in 2003.
Löfstrand et al. [84] compared different northern European locations (i.e., Baltic Sea (Stora Karlsö), Norway, Faroer Islands, and Iceland) and found the highest PFOS levels in guillemot eggs from the Baltic Sea with a mean concentration of 400 ng/g ww in 2003.
Bignert et al. [88] report mean PFOS concentrations of 1,475 ng/g ww in guillemot eggs from Stora Karlsö in 2007 and a significant increasing trend of 7%to10%0% per year between the late 1960s and the early 2000s.
Löfstrand et al. [84] report mean PFNA, PFUnA, and PFDoA levels of 48 ng/g, 82 ng/g, and 18 ng/g ww, respectively, in guillemot eggs from the Baltic Sea island Stora Karlsö in 2003.
Between 1969 and 2003, BDE-47 in guillemot eggs from Stora Karlsö ranged between 45 and 1,100 ng/g lw, while levels of BDE-99 and -100 were lower (i.e., 2.0 to 190 ng/g and 1.0 to 100 ng/g, respectively, with BDE-100 analyzed only until 1997 [65, 93]).
In the first case, B. garinii variant 16 was identified in I. uriae ticks collected in guillemot colony in arctic Norway, as well as in I. ricinus larva and nymph from migratory passerine birds captured in southern Sweden (Table 1) [1].
PFOS has been present in the Swedish environment at least since 1968, and the levels increased dramatically up to 1997 in guillemot eggs (Holmström et al. 2004).
In aggregate, however, previous studies do as predicted indicate a particularly low adult survival rate relative to body mass in the guillemots (Cepphus spp ., in which parental investment appears to be particularly high due to their two-egg clutch, very high provisioning rates, and fast development [ 63].
The exceptions, for which only a single sample was found, were B. garinii variants 3 and 7 from I. uriae ticks in a guillemot colony in arctic Norway, and the variant 15 identified in a questing I. ricinus nymph in Lithuania.
Levels of PAHs in the present study are an order of magnitude lower than those reported in Common Guillemots Uria aalge which had got exposed to oil spill on the east coast of England during 2001-2002 [ 25].
