It was surprising enough in March when a Maine researcher found traces of industrial chemicals in bird eggs collected from all corners of the state.

Whatever the species of bird, its diet or its habitat, the eggs contained a soup of chemicals, including pesticides, solvents and carpet-stain repellents. Some of the same chemicals have also been found in humans, including some raised in relatively pristine parts of Maine, harbor seals that swim along the New England coast and even Arctic polar bears.

Now comes perhaps the most surprising evidence yet to support the “if-you-look-for-it-you’ll-find-it” theory of environmental toxicology.

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass., a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reported this week that it found chemical contaminants in deep-sea squids and octopods, including the “vampire squid.”

These species, which are eaten by deep-diving whales, live 3,300 to 6,600 feet beneath the ocean’s surface. How they got exposed to industrial chemicals like flame retardants and the pesticide DDT is a mystery.

“It was surprising to find measurable and sometimes high amounts of toxic pollutants in such a deep and remote environment,” said Michael Vecchione, a lead researcher at the center. Here is a news release about the study, which is being published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.

Part of the reason that we’re seeing more findings like this is that scientists are now able to detect the chemicals at low levels. In other words, it’s simply because we’re looking.

It’s not clear what affect, if any, the chemicals are having on the birds, the vampire squids or us, for that matter. But now that the chemicals seem to be showing up everywhere we look, it is, as Vecchione says, “a real concern.”

Terry Connelly remembers clipping out a 2002 newspaper headline declaring an end to the long-running saga of the McKin toxic waste site in Gray.

It was a satisfying, mission-accomplished moment for Connelly, who lives in Eliot and oversaw the site for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The sad stories of all the people affected by poisoned groundwater around the former dump are still with him.

But toxic waste sites have a way of hanging around and causing headaches, or worse, long after the cleanup crews pull out. “They don’t seem to go away,” Connelly said.

Connelly is part of an EPA team revisiting the McKin neighborhood this summer as part of a five-year review. He hopes to find that nature’s self-cleaning cycle is making progress. But it’s a forgone conclusion that the plume of toxic chemicals is still lingering deep in the sand, gravel and bedrock, moving very slowly into the Royal River.

And there is an emerging concern that the chemicals left behind could still pose a health threat in the form of vapors seeping up through the ground.

The McKin Co. began dumping oil sludge and industrial solvents into a former gravel pit off Mayall Road in the 1960s. The waste came from more than 400 businesses, school districts, municipalities and churches.

In 1975, two friends living near the site noticed stinky drinking water. After one had a miscarriage, they began hearing about a range of health problems in the neighborhood, including skin rashes.

Tests finally identified industrial contaminants in the water two years later, and the town shut down McKin and began extending public water to the owners of 50 contaminated wells.

McKin became the catalyst for a whole set of state laws regulating the hazardous waste sites that would follow. It emerged around the same time as other toxic sites around the country, including one in a New York neighborhood called Love Canal, and eventually became one of the first in Maine to be named a federal Superfund cleanup site.

The parties that sent waste to McKin spent more than $21 million on the cleanup, which included pumping and treating groundwater for several years. The active cleanup was declared over in the late 1990s after experts decided the site would clean itself naturally within about 50 years, just as fast as the pump-and-treat effort.

The groups that had been financing the cleanup paid a $4.5 million settlement to landowners and other parties. And in 2002 the story was declared over.

Groundwater and the Royal River continued to be monitored, however, and will for decades more. The Royal River has been meeting water quality standards, even at the point where the groundwater plume discharges into it, Connelly said.

But the old dump site may still be capable of harming its neighbors.

When the cleanup was declared over, no one thought of toxic vapors seeping up through the soil into homes and buildings.

“It wasn’t on anyone’s radar screen,” Connelly said. “And then a couple years later, we start hearing these stories about other sites … We’re seeing it throughout the country.”

EPA officials plan to test air quality in some Gray homes this summer, he said. If there is any evidence of “vapor intrusion,” the contaminants would be vented away much like radon gas that seeps into basements.

It’s another reminder, Connelly said, that avoiding a mess is a whole lot cheaper and faster than cleaning one up.

It was a big week for Maine’s air and water, and for Edmund Muskie.

The late governor, senator and statesman from Rumford was the driving force behind the federal Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act in the early 1970s. And nearly 40 years later, both laws are still cleaning up his home state’s rivers, lakes, coastal waters and air.

On Monday, the Portland City Council voted to spend $61 million to speed up efforts to keep millions of gallons of untreated sewage from spilling into Casco Bay every time it rains.

It will mean a 21 percent increase in sewer rates. It also will mean cleaner water for swimmers and sea life, and relief for clam flats that have been contaminated since Muskie was elected governor in 1954.

Muskie knew all about the damage from sewage along the coast.

Getting rid of old motor oil was a pretty simple matter in the 1950s and ’60s.

If you didn’t want to mess up your own property, you could pay a guy like George West 2 cents a gallon to take it away and dump it in an old gravel pit.

But what might have seemed like a cheap solution really was not. The bill just got deferred for a while. And, as the oil and other chemicals seeped deeper into the ground and the bedrock, it got bigger.

So big, in fact, that starting this week, you and I are being hit up to cover about $30 million of the cost. We’ll pay through a $1 fee effectively added to the cost of every oil change for the next 10 to 20 years.

What to do with those old pain medications or expired allergy pills?

It used to be an easy one to answer – flush ‘em down the drain or the toilet. That’s still what many hospitals and nursing homes do. It’s an easy way to make sure they don’t fall into the wrong hands and get misused.

But flushing may be the worst of many bad disposal options. That’s because the ingredients in drugs – including lots of hormones and sedatives – make it all the way through the sewers and treatment plants into streams, rivers and coastal waters. As a result, scientists in some parts of the country have been finding overmedicated fish, including some males that have effectively been turned into fertile females that lay eggs.

Although no hormone-confused trout have been reported in Maine yet, a variety of pharmaceuticals have been detected at low levels in waterways here.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the American Pharmacists Association are now trying to get the word out that flushing medications is the wrong answer. Their official advice is to smash pills and seal them in a plastic bag with cat litter or old coffee grounds and throw them into the trash.

Maine officials and community organizations are looking for a more long-term solution.

This Friday, residents of the mid-coast area can drop off old medications at four collection points. The drugs will ultimately be incinerated at a facility with special emissions controls. Here are the details about when and where you can drop off the old meds.

Efforts to create a statewide mail-back collection system have fallen short over the past few years because of a lack of money. Now, however, the University of Maine has a $150,000 federal grant to create a pilot mail-in collection program that could lead to a new disposal option not only for Maine, but other states as well. Here’s a description of the project.

One more link for you while we're on the subject. Look here for information about a pharmaceuticals-in-the-environment conference to be held in Portland in August.

Now that lunch time’s over, just thought we’d share this list of some of the things collected along the shore of Portland’s Back Cove last Saturday.

About 30 people helped with a cleanup organized by the Back Cove Neighborhood Association, Friends of Casco Bay and Portland Trails. They filled a pickup with junk, and later sent us this partial tally:

Two jackets
Two shoes
23 syringes from the southwest cove (near the soccer fields), 10 syringes from the northwest cove
12 bait containers
50-plus cigarette items (filters, packaging, lighters etc)
1 insulin bottle and gauze
6 plastic six-pack holders
Frisbee, rubber ball, golf tee
A tire
3 diapers
A CD player
A traffic cone
Numerous tampon applicators
Various plastic forks, spoons & knives
A $20 bill (play money – unfortunately)

Now, no one who has taken a close look at a Maine beach would be surprised about the bounty of cigarette butts. (Someone ought to invent something for smokers to put their butts in when they’re done with them. You know, like ... AN ASHTRAY.)

But what’s with all the syringes?

Political figures often seem uncomfortable with a lot of personal scrutiny.

Rep. Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven, is opening herself up, to the extreme.

Pingree, the 30-year-old House Majority Leader and fast-rising star of the Maine Legislature, has given up samples of her blood, hair and urine to be tested for toxic chemicals. It’s part of a study to be released within a few weeks by a coalition of environmental and public health organizations.

Pingree, who has made no secret of findings that she is carrying around an assortment of toxins that have no business in the human body, sponsored a bill this session to phase out a common fire retardant chemical. (The phase out of deca-BDE got the initial support of the Natural Resources Committee last week, although committee members brought it back for a follow-up discussion today.)

We’ll bring you the full study details as soon as they’re available. In the meantime, the Lewiston Sun Journal had a story about Pingree’s role as a very public guinea pig and her decision to forgo sushi and tuna as a result.

All of which makes you wonder: If a 30-year-old woman who grew up on a fairly remote Maine island has this stuff in her body, what are the rest of us packing around?