Enhancing radiological monitoring of 137Cs in coastal environments using taxonomic signals in brown seaweeds

Hunt, D; Dewar, A; Dal Molin, F; Willey, N

Abstract

With the rapidly expanding global nuclear industry, more efficient and direct radiological monitoring approaches are needed to ensure the associated environmental health impacts and risk remain fully assessed and undertaken as robustly as possible. Conventionally, radiological monitoring in the environment consists of measuring a wide range of anthropogenically enhanced radionuclides present in selected environmental matrices and using generic transfer values for modelling and prediction that are not necessarily suitable in some situations. Previous studies have found links between taxonomy and radionuclide uptake in terrestrial plants and freshwater fish, but the marine context remains relatively unexplored. This preliminary study was aimed at investigating a similar relationship between brown seaweed, an important indicator in radiological monitoring programmes in the marine environment, and Caesium-137, an important radionuclide discharged to the marine environment. A linear mixed model was fitted using REsidual Maximum Likelihood (REML) to activity concentration data collected from literature published worldwide and other databases. The output from REML modelling was adjusted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) quoted transfer value for all seaweed taxa in order to produce mean estimate transfer value for each species, which were then analysed by hierarchical ANalysis Of VAriance (ANOVA) based on the taxonomy of brown seaweeds. Transfer value was found to vary between taxa with increasing significance up the taxonomic hierarchy, suggesting a link to evolutionary history. This novel approach enables contextualisation of activity concentration measurements of important marine indicator species in relation to the wider community, allows prediction of unknown transfer values without the need to sample specific species and could, therefore, enhance radiological monitoring by providing accurate, taxon specific transfer values for use in dose assessments and models of radionuclide transfer in the environment. [Abstract copyright: Crown Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.]

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 27, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Aug 2, 2023
• Publication Date: Nov 30, 2023
• Deposit Date: Aug 4, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 8, 2023
• Journal: Journal of Environmental Radioactivity
• Print ISSN: 0265-931X
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 268-269
• Article Number: 107261
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvrad.2023.107261
• Keywords: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis; Pollution; Waste Management and Disposal; General Medicine; Environmental Chemistry
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11002901
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: Enhancing radiological monitoring of 137Cs in coastal environments using taxonomic signals in brown seaweeds; Journal Title: Journal of Environmental Radioactivity; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvrad.2023.107261; Content Type: article; Copyright: Crown Copyright © 2023 Published by Elsevier Ltd.