Gilbertson had also read an earlier report, coauthored by Davis,
that described the declining proportion of male births in the United States, Canada, and several other industrialized nations.
Earlier, as a government researcher, Gilbertson had been one of the first scientists to
document the way industrial pollution in the Great Lakes was leading to deformities in birds, including such garbage-dump denizens as herring gulls.
Using the evidence presented at a worker's compensation hearing,
Michael Gilbertson, a former federal government biologist who studied
the health effects of toxic chemicals, and Jim Brophy, an occupational health researcher, found that they could infer a causal relationship between the woman's diagnosis of breast cancer and her high exposure to air pollution- as a border guard at the bridge connecting Windsor, Ont. to Detroit,