For decades, Coho salmon were turning up dead in urban streams the Pacific Northwest. The salmon would stop swimming straight, and then die before they had a chance to spawn. Researchers worried that unless they figured out the cause, the species would eventually go extinct. Enter a formidable crew of biologists, modelers, community scientists, environmental chemists. After eventually ruling out the obvious suspects 鈥� things like temperature, oxygen levels and known toxins 鈥� researchers eventually zeroed in on a prime suspect: chemicals in tires. But the question remained: Which one?
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This episode was produced by Jessica Yung and edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. It was fact-checked by Tyler Jones and Kwesi Lee was the audio engineer.
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