Ward Stone, wildlife coroner who warned of PCBs, dies at 84

As a New York State animal pathologist, he ventured far and wide to study the impact of toxic chemicals on humans .

Ward B. Stone, who as a maverick wildlife pathologist from New York State pleased conservationists but provoked the anger of his bosses and corporate polluters by going beyond his mandate to expose the dangers that PCBs and other toxic chemicals also posed to humans, died Feb. 29. 8 in Troy, N.Y. He was 84.

The apparent cause was respiratory failure, his daughter Montana Stone said.

In the nearly 42 years he was employed by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, Mr. Stone and his team performed thousands of autopsies on mammals ranging in size from from mice to moose, as well as hawks, swans, deer, beavers and bears. The cause of death included accidents, illegal hunting, deliberate poisoning, and contamination with pesticides and other toxins.

But during his medical investigations legal, and also by himself, he sampled soil, landfills, ashes and other residues and was one of the pioneers - together with Gunnar Widmark and Soren Jensen of Stockholm University and biologist Robert Riseborough of the University of California at Berkeley - to find evidence that polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, were ubiquitous in the environment.

"As a pathologist from wildlife, Ward Stone brought environmental threats to light long before others could notice them and gave a scientific voice to nature in times of crisis when few other state officials would listen,” said said Roger Downs, director of conservation for the Atlantic section of Sie rra Club, in a statement.

“His methods were at times unconventional,” Mr. Downs added, “but he always chose to pursue environmental justice before the unnecessary bureaucracy, and the natural world is a better place thanks to his fearless advocacy. »

Mr. Stone found PCBs at the base of utility poles and other sites; reproached the fishermen for ballasting their hooks with lead sinkers; and even discovered traces of the insecticide DDT on the grounds of one of his own ministry's regional offices.

Two decades ago, at the height of of the West Nile virus outbreak, which Mr. Stone had helped identify, his lab was flooded with an average of 300 wild animal corpses every day. A stainless steel refrigerated mobile chest designed for the dead has been adapted for large turtles.

Mr. Stone often ventured beyond his remit as a pathologist and leaked his findings to the media. This led some people to view him as a brash, uneducated intruder.

He enjoyed his renegade reputation. "I've been called a loose cannon," he once said, "but I always know exactly where I'm shooting."

But there was also other criticisms, which were corroborated in a report by the State Inspector General.

In 2012, two years after Mr. Stone retired, the inspector general, responding to years of complaints from state employees and disclosures in The Times-Union of Albany, concluded that he had "engaged in chronic misconduct with impunity, including abuse of personnel, misappropriation of state resources and insubordination”.

The investigation claimed that he had used the wildlife resource center of the department in upstate Delmar as residence; demoralized employees, who complained of verbal abuse and insufficient training in security protocols; gave them personal chores, such as caring for the chickens he kept as pets for his children; centrally stored firearms; and failed to submit records of the time he spent working for the state.

While he collected tens of thousands of dollars in benefits inappropriate personnel for almost four decades as a state employee, according to the inspector general's report, he was simply warned and not officially sanctioned, b...