Given their widespread use and chemical similarities to PCBs, and the scant attention that had been paid to them in American scientific journals, “it just made sense to start studying them,” she says. “There was clearly a need.” Her doctoral dissertation spawned three peer-reviewed papers and led to a two-year National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Stapleton's speedy ascendance up the scientific ranks has earned her a reputation as a tireless and meticulous researcher. But visitors to her office, or to her old Web site at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, are presented with a different, more fun-loving image: A photo of her posing, mock-seductively, on the seat of a Harley-Davidson with her long blonde hair cascading over one shoulder and a pair of high heels dangling over the handlebars.
She smiles when asked about it. “I was at a friend's wedding,” she explains. “We were all dressed up and everyone in our lab took turns posing on this guy's bike. It was a joke. Chemists are allowed to joke.”
All joking aside, Stapleton's emergence as one of America's top experts on PBDEs comes at a time when there is increasing evidence of the chemicals' pervasive presence in our environment.
Studies by other researchers have found that PBDEs are rapidly accumulating in rivers, oceans and other aquatic ecosystems in Europe and North America. Elevated concentrations of PBDEs have been found in the fat tissue of species as diverse as polar bears, killer whales and farmed salmon, in locations as geographically far-flung as Greenland, Norway, the Great Lakes and the Pacific Northwest.
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