What Happened to Mary L. Schafer?
A mystery begins! In an old 1956 report on Paralytic Shellfish Poison—some interesting information on PSP field test kits is crossed out with a pen. What happened? I don’t have all the answers, but we get some leads. Are you a chemist or biomedical scientist? Maybe you could help piece together some clues and help us find out what happened to public health researcher Mary L. Schafer. Check out the shell notes below, the podcast above and below the shell notes—I’ll pop in this show’s script.
SHELL NOTES!
The Public Health Significance of Paralytic Shellfish Poison: A Review of Literature and Unpublished Research, published in 1956; I made a copy with my camera – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LQUhnpy_G16i8iXsTq_gHNaEJgYBdMpt/view?usp=drive_link [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LQUhnpy_G16i8iXsTq_gHNaEJgYBdMpt/view?usp=drive_link]
It’s also at Public Health Significance of Paralytic Shellfish Poison - ScienceDirect [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/bookseries/abs/pii/S0065262808601378]
The Haptenic Properties of Paralytic Shellfish Poison
First quarterly report: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0263130.pdf [https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0263130.pdf]
Third quarterly report: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0263132.pdf [https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0263132.pdf]
Seventh quarterly report: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0276708.pdf [https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0276708.pdf]
Past Mariculture Minute PST episode: https://thekelpshow.substack.com/p/spies-mice-and-shellfish [https://thekelpshow.substack.com/p/spies-mice-and-shellfish]
I found this article about more recent research on PST field kits in Japan - Immunochromatography Test Kit for Paralytic Shellfish Toxins (PSTs) and Transition of PSTs in Scallops - PMC [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12995443/]
Mary Schafer’s Obituary (Princeton Clarion) - https://www.pdclarion.com/obituaries/mary-louise-schafer/article_4ed449b4-4c82-5043-bb2b-f235350bd4ec.html [https://www.pdclarion.com/obituaries/mary-louise-schafer/article_4ed449b4-4c82-5043-bb2b-f235350bd4ec.html]
More Mary Schafer Science!
Pesticides in blood | Springer Nature Link [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4615-8440-7_2]
Gas chromatographic detection of D-(-)-2,3-butanediol and butyric acid produced by sporeformers in cream-style corn and canned beef noodle soup: Collaborative study
https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/0022374960 [https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/0022374960]
Mercury in chicken eggs | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry [https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf60207a038] (1976)
Pesticides in drinking water. Waters from the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers | Environmental Science & Technology [https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es60035a005]
An Assessment of Some Public Health Problems Resulting from Feeding Poultry Litter to Animals.: Microbiological and Chemical Parameters - ScienceDirect [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003257911953810X]
Purified Shellfish Poison for Bioassay Standardization | Journal of AOAC INTERNATIONAL | Oxford Academic [https://academic.oup.com/jaoac/article-abstract/41/1/160/5731692?redirectedFrom=fulltext] (1958)
The Robert A Taft Sanitary Engineering Center
Robert A. Taft Sanitary Engineering Center, Cincinnati, Ohio - Cincinnati Enquirer Photo Archive - Digital Library [https://digital.cincinnatilibrary.org/digital/collection/p16998coll65/id/5873/]
Robert A. Taft Sanitary Engineering Center | The Online Books Page [https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Robert%20A%2E%20Taft%20Sanitary%20Engineering%20Center]
EPISODE SCRIPT!
Welcome to Mariculture Minute. A podcast about seaweed, shellfish and salmon in Alaska. I’m Jeremiah Murphy. And today, a mystery. You guys, whatever happened to Mary L. Schafer?
Back in the episode list you’ll see three Mariculture MInuter episodes devoted to Paralytic Shellfish Toxins. It’s a natural toxin that can sometimes get in shellfish, and it can be deadly, but we have all sorts cool ways test for it. And all commercial shellfish, in Alaska are tested for it. But in those episodes, I refer to an old type written report I found at the library.
The Public Health Significance of Paralytic Shellfish Poison: A Review of Literature and Unpublished Research, published in 1956, with five authors from the the Robert A. Taft Sanitary ENgineering Center in Cincinatti, Ohio, the Milk and Food Program and the military’s Chemical Corps. The report has 37 pages packed with history, science and proposed tools for prevent of paralytic shellfish toxins–lab testing methods to find the nasty toxins in shellfish. Today, we have a few different tests. The state Alaska uses mice for commercial testing, I think they’ve also approved a new chemical test, the local tribe in Sitka uses a receptor binding assay. These are tests in a lab, scientists perform them, these are effective but not very portable. In my research, I’ve been curious if there was ever a portable test, that say an oyster farmer or someone harvesting clams could perform on the spot. Kind of like the old covid tests, remember those? Like a field a test, is there a field test for paralytic shellfish toxin?
Well, in the back of this 1954 report, on page 37, the final paragraph before the bibliography, you might call this last word of these five scientists. That final paragraph is crossed out in blue pen with a big X! It’s crossed out twice. But you can still read it. It says:
“Another method which offers some promise of being useful as a field test is the chromate color test.” OK, I’m going to keep reading but bare in mind I’m no chemist, and it’s going get extremely science-y now.
“Another method which offers some promise of being useful as a field test is the chromate color test. A brief description of this test is as follows: when an aqueous solution containing microgram quantities of shellfish poison and milligram quantitities of chromium (VI) (H2CRO4) is made acidic, a blue color develops which is proportional to the amount of poison present. It has been possible to use a modification of this test in an assay of the acid extract of some species of clams.”
Why was this crossed out? That’s my question. But in the paragraph, there is a citation, number 40. Let’s hit up that bibliography that starts on the next page.
There’s number 40, oh no it’s crossed out, with thick inky lines. But if I take a picture with my phone and zoom it up--I can make out the letters, Schafer, Mary Unpublished Data of SEC.
Why was it crossed out? I mean, my initial impulse was maybe someone was embarrassed the report contained a reference to unpublished data. But there were five authors and it’s typed into the bibliography–it seems like it could been excluded in an early draft. And also the paragraph that’s crossed out doesn’t seem definitive–it seems to suggest something that would benefit from future study. But anyway, I wanted to find out who this Mary Schafer is and I’ll admit. It took me a while I found not a whole lot on the internet. It’s a fairly common name. Until I looked back on the cover report realized the answer was right there in front of me. One of the authors is written as M. L. Schafer from the Robert A. Taft Sanitary Engineering Center in Cincinatti Ohio. Sanitary Engineering Center, abbreviates as SEC. The crossed out reference–number 40 in the bibliography, cites Schafer, Mary Unpublished data of SEC. I think this is that same person, this unpublished data was from one of the reports authors–Mary L. Schafer. But why was it crossed out and whatever to this promising chromate color field test.
Well, with this new knowledge, I’ve been able to somewhat Mary L. Schafer’s prolific career in public health. She wrote papers on mercury in chicken eggs, Schafer researched the presence of that pesticide DDT in human blood, an earlier paper about preparing paralytic shellfish toxins for testing, and then in 1960 it looks like Schafer was part of a research team working for the U.S. Army Chemical Corps on the Haptenic Properties of Paralytic Shellfish Poison. There’s a couple declassified progress reports online. I tried looking up the definition of Haptenic–and my college education fails me on this one. I think it has something to do with antigens and immunology. Which makes sense because according to the report one of the purposes of the project was “to lay the ground work for immunization of humans against the poison.” And the poison is paralytic shellfish poison. That was 1960, over 60 years ago. I’ll post the reports in the shell notes –from my reading it looks like they were having trouble immunizing test animals for PSP, but it looks like they were on to something.
Maybe it didn’t pan out, maybe funding stopped, maybe I’m not very good at reading scientific papers from 1960. But I’m curious where that work led.
But in terms of Schafer, I found some of her papers going into the 80s. It looks like she did some research into food poisoning of canned goods.
And I found her obituary, in the Princeton Clarion. She passed away at 87 years old in 2003. I’ll read some of her obituary:
“She retired in 1984 from working in the Food and Drug Administration at Cincinnati in the Division of Microbial Biochemistry. She also was in the U.S. Army from 1941 until 1946 and was sent to England just before D-Day. She worked as a dietitian prior to joining the Army. She was a member of Hyde Park Community United Methodist Church in Cincinnati.”
“She graduated from Purdue University in 1938 with a B.S. in nutrition. She completed her internship and received her R.D. in 1939 in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1946, she attended Columbia University and obtained her M.S. in nutrition in 1949. She later received her Ph.D. in chemistry from Purdue in 1955 and began her job with the Food and Drug Administration in Cincinnati. During her career, she developed a method for finding contaminants in food and water using gas chromatography.”
It sounds like Mary Schafer was a real public health hero. But I’m still curious why the field test stuff was crossed out from that 1954 report. And her work into immunizing people from PSP–doing that for the army–I wonder where that research led. Mary Schafer sounds fascinating. I’ll add links to her research in the shell notes. But if any chemists out there can shed some light on this chromate color test or the haptenic properties of paralytic shellfish poison–I’d be curious what you have to say. Feel free to contact me at kelpshow dot com or on instagram at kelpshow. Perhaps it all led nowhere. Or maybe there’s some valuable research sitting in some old typewritten report, shelved in a rlibrary somewhere. The mystery continues.
Special thanks to the Sitka Public Library and Google Scholar for this episode. And special thanks to W for providing the music. Check out the shell notes at kelpshow dot com. You can find Mariculture Minute on all the usual podcast places and on Instagram at kelpshow.
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