Abstract
Wildlife concentration ratios for 226Ra, 210Pb, 210Po and isotopes of Th and U from soil, water, and sediments were evaluated for a range of Australian uranium mining environments. Whole-organism concentration ratios (CRwo-media) were developed for 271 radionuclide-organism pairs within the terrestrial and freshwater wildlife groups. Australian wildlife often has distinct physiological attributes, such as the lower metabolic rates of macropod marsupials as compared with placental mammals. In addition, the Australian CRswo-media originate from tropical and semi-arid climates, rather than from the temperate-dominated climates of Europe and North America from which most (>90%) of internationally available CRwo-media values originate. When compared, the Australian and non-Australian CRs are significantly different for some wildlife categories (e.g. grasses, mammals) but not others (e.g. shrubs). Where differences exist, the Australian values were higher, suggesting that site-, or region-specific CRswo-media should be used in detailed Australian assessments. However, in screening studies, use of the international mean values in the Wildlife Transfer Database (WTD) appears to be appropriate, as long as the values used encompass the Australian 95th percentile values. Gaps in the Australian datasets include a lack of marine parameters, and no CR data are available for freshwater phytoplankton, zooplankton, insects, insect larvae or amphibians; for terrestrial environments, there are no data for amphibians, annelids, ferns, fungi or lichens & bryophytes. The new Australian specific parameters will aide in evaluating remediation plans and ongoing operations at mining and waste sites within Australia. They have also substantially bolstered the body of U- and Th-series CRwo-media data for use internationally.
Highlights
Evaluation of radiation doses to wildlife is required for environmental impact assessments conducted at mining sites involving naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM)
In comparing with the WTD 2013 mean values, the general Australian data did not present significant outliers, suggesting that the WTD summarised values are generally appropriate for use in screening level assessments within Australia in the absence of any site-specific data
We report an additional CRwo-media data set representing mine-tailings where acidic conditions likely increase radionuclide mobilisation (Read and Pickering, 1999), and lead to elevated CRswo-media in most categories. When these mine-tailing CRswo-media were included, 45% of the mean Australian CRswo-media were elevated more than one order of magnitude above the non-Australian mean CRs
Summary
Evaluation of radiation doses to wildlife is required for environmental impact assessments conducted at mining sites involving naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM). Whole-organism concentration ratios (CRwo-media) are essential in these assessments (if site-specific data are unavailable) as they relate radionuclide activity concentration of the whole-organism (wo) to that of the organism's host environmental medium (media) (Howard et al, 2013; Beresford, 2010). Dose rates to wildlife (e.g., ERICA Tool) utilise summarised CRwomedia values from the Wildlife Transfer Database (WTD, http:// www.wildlifetransferdatabase.org/), which was developed through recent work within the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (Copplestone et al, 2013). The WTD has been updated (see Beresford et al, 2014 and Brown et al, 2016) and we refer to this updated version of the database as ‘WTD 2013’. Hirth et al / Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 178-179 (2017) 385e393
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