An ESSAY by Dr. John P. Giesy
ESI Special Topics,
January 2004
Citing URL - http://www.esi-topics.com/pcb/interviews/JohnPGiesy.html
 n this essay, Dr. John Giesy of Michigan State University talks
about the path of his highly cited work in PCB research. According to
our Special Topics analysis of PCB research over the past decade, Dr.
Giesy ranks at #3
among researchers publishing in this field, with 101
papers cited a total of 1,960 times. In the ISI
Essential
Science Indicators
Web product, Dr. Giesy
currently has 145 papers cited a total of 2,405 times to date in the
field of Environment/Ecology, ranking him at #6 among researchers in
this field, and 19 papers cited a total of 461 times to date in the
field of Pharmacology & Toxicology. Dr. Giesy is a Distinguished
Professor of Zoology and Professor of Veterinary Medicine in the
Department of Zoology at Michigan State University.
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I have always been interested in wildlife. Since the first Earth
Day in 1970, I have been interested in contaminants in the environment
and how they might affect wildlife. In 1981, I returned to Michigan
State University after eight years at the University of Georgia. I
wanted to conduct work on the potential effects on fish and wildlife
in the North American Great Lakes. At the time, an issue was why
reproduction of fish and birds of the Great Lakes was less than would
have been expected. In particular, I was interested in a suite of
effects referred to as the Great Lakes Embryo Mortality and Embryo
Deformity Syndrome (GLEMEDS). I set about determining the causes of
these effects, first in fish and then in birds and subsequently in
mammals, such as mink. This was a detective story that needed
information on ecology, toxicology, biochemistry, and instrumental
analyses. Because PCBs were known to be a major contaminant of the
Great Lakes, I worked first on developing instrumental analyses to
better describe all of the individual congeners of PCBs present in the
complex weathered mixtures. I then worked on determining the
mechanisms of action of the various PCB congeners.
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“This was a detective story that needed information on ecology, toxicology, biochemistry, and instrumental analyses.„
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Then, based on
these mechanisms of action, I developed bioanalytical techniques based
on genetically engineered in vitro cell systems that gave us a
method to assess the toxic potency of complex mixtures of
contaminants. Then, I applied these techniques to understanding the
relationships between embryo lethality and deformities in birds of the
Great Lakes in field studies. Finally, I applied various fractionation
techniques to confirm that PCBs were in fact responsible for the
observed effects. The methods and results developed over a period of
more than 20 years have been adapted by other researchers and applied
to other situations. The results of the studies of mechanisms of
action and bioanalytical techniques have been applied to monitoring of
locations all over the world. Now, the results of our studies have
been used to develop environmental quality criteria that are applied
as clean-up levels all over the world. My papers have been highly
cited because they were generally seminal papers that presented
information or techniques for the first time. Since PCBs have been
ubiquitous contaminants, responsible for adverse effects in a number
of wildlife populations, the results of my work have been much cited
by other researchers working in other locations, particularly in the
Baltic Sea.
As for future directions for our work, I imagine that the results
of my work on PCBs will continue to be applied in the future. While I
will continue to do field studies to investigate the site-specific
effects of PCBs, I have completed the majority of the work that I
wanted to complete on PCBs and their environmental fates and potential
effects. I will continue to apply the approaches that combine
chemistry, biology, toxicology, ecology, and both field and laboratory
studies to other environmental issues. Most recently, I have been
applying similar techniques to understanding the fates and potential
effects of a new class of compounds, the perfluorinated hydrocarbons.
John P. Giesy, Ph.D.
Zoology Department
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, USA
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ESI Special Topics,
January 2004
Citing URL - http://www.esi-topics.com/pcb/interviews/JohnPGiesy.html
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