Lead-proof lizards with lethal levels of lead are roaming New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS (WGNO)— Scientists at Tulane University made a discovery! Lead-resistant lizards are roaming around New Orleans!

Their studies show that the lizards here have a unprecedented amount of lethal lead in their bodies.

The study published in “Environmental Research” found that the lizard lead levels exceeded all previously reported values for fish, amphibians, birds, reptiles and mammals.

Alex Gunderson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Tulane University said that he and his students are studying these effects of lead on lizards.

They discovered that the lizards have a lethal level of lead in their bodies, but the lizards are thriving despite the toxic exposure to lead.

“What was really interesting is they had the extreme high blood lead levels, higher than any animal we could find recorded by anyone else, anywhere in the world,” Gunderson said.

“The lizards seem to be able to ingest a lot of lead and it doesn’t affect them, and it’s at levels that other animals would be dead, animals and humans,” he said.

They found that the lizards are ingesting the lead from the highly-contaminated soil in New Orleans, yet they remain lead resistant.

“We did a bunch of physiological experiments on how fast they can run, how long they can run for, their endurance, and things like that and found no effects,” Gunderson said.

Gunderson and his students used pan fishing poles with floss on the end of the poles to catch the lizards for their experiments.

Moving forward they want to catch even more data and knowledge to help with lead poisoning research.

“We’ll be studying other lizard species to try to understand are brown anole lizards unique, are they special, or is it all lizards that are incredibly lead resistant. Since they seem to be so tolerant, how are they doing it and I think that has the potential to unlock potential treatments for lead exposure or heavy metal exposure,” Gunderson said.

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