Comparison of Doses and Risks Obtained From Dose Reconstructions for Historical Operations of Federal Facilities That Supported the Development, Production, or Testing of Nuclear Weapons

Reed, E. W.; Thiessen, Kathleen M; Hoffman, F.O.; Apostoaei, A. Iulian

doi:10.1097/00004032-200306000-00001

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Carbon tetrachloride (CT) was widely used in industry and in nuclear weapons manufacture (1), and it is frequently encountered as a groundwater contaminant (2). Since CT is a systemic poison and a carcinogen (3), its fate in the environment is of concern.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The current study was undertaken to determine the potential for phytoremediation of CT using poplar trees grown under field conditions. Two hypotheses were tested in the study: (1) mineralization is the dominant fate of CT in phytoremediation and (2) CT mineralization is due to plant metabolic activity, rather than microbial metabolism in the root zone. The field study was performed using artificial aquifer cells as described in Newman et al (13).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The field study was performed using artificial aquifer cells as described in Newman et al (13). To provide a mass balance of CT and its dechlorination products, the following components were determined: (1) total mass of CT applied to and removed from the artificial aquifers, (2) the amount of CT transpired by the leaves, (3) the amount of CT diffused from soil, trunks, and roots exposed in the surface soil, (4) the accumulation of inorganic and organic chloride in the plant tissues, and (5) the accumulation of chloride ion in the soil of the test bed. This is the first time that diffusion removal has been included in a mass balance study of phytoremediation of volatile chlorinated hydrocarbons.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fate of Carbon Tetrachloride during Phytoremediation with Poplar under Controlled Field Conditions

Wang

Dossett

Gordon

et al. 2004

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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The fate of carbon tetrachloride (CT) during phytoremediation with poplar was assessed by examining the transpiration of CT from leaves, diffusion from soil, tree trunks, and surface roots, and accumulation of chloride ion in soil and plant tissues. Feedwater containing 12-15 mg/L CT was added to the field test beds planted with poplar, and over 99% of the CT was removed. No significant amount of CT was transpired or diffused into the air, and no significant amount of CT-chlorine accumulated in the tree tissues. Chloride ion accumulated in the soil accounted for all of the CT-chlorine removed. When soils from the root zones were compared to unvegetated soils, microbial mineralization of CT was not enhanced in soils from the root zones as compared to unvegetated soils. Thus, we conclude that uptake and dechlorination of CT by plant tissues is likely the primary mechanism for phytoremediation by poplar.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fate of Carbon Tetrachloride during Phytoremediation with Poplar under Controlled Field Conditions

Wang

Dossett

Gordon

et al. 2004

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Fallout from Nuclear Weapons Tests: Environmental, Health, Political, and Sociological Considerations

Bouville

2020

Health Physics

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The process of nuclear fission, which was discovered in 1938, opened the door to the production of nuclear weapons, which were used in 1945 by the United States against Japan in World War II, and to the detonation of >500 nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere by the United States, the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, China, and France from 1946–1980. Hundreds of radionuclides, most of them short-lived, were produced in the atmospheric tests. The radioactive clouds produced by the explosions were usually partitioned between the troposphere and the stratosphere: the activity that remained in the troposphere resulted in local and regional fallout, consisting mainly of short-lived radionuclides and in relatively high doses for the populations residing in the vicinity of the test site, whereas the activity that reached the stratosphere returned to the ground with a half-life of ~1 y and was composed of long-lived radionuclides that contaminated all uncovered materials on Earth to a small extent and led to low-level irradiation of the world population for decades or more. The health effects resulting from exposure to radioactive fallout constitute, in most cases, small excesses over baseline rates for thyroid cancer and leukemia. An extra 49,000 cases of thyroid cancer would be expected to occur among the US population from exposure to radioactive fallout from the atmospheric nuclear weapons tests that were conducted at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s. In addition, there could be as many as 11,000 deaths from non-thyroid cancers related to fallout from all atmospheric tests that were conducted at all sites in the world, with leukemia making up 10% of the total. Public concern arose in part from the secrecy that surrounded the nuclear testing programs and, for a long time, the poor communication regarding the consequences of the tests, both in terms of radiation doses and of health effects. Sociological and political pressures contributed to the establishment of programs of compensation for radiation exposures and evidence of radiation-induced diseases in countries that incurred significant fallout from nuclear weapons testing.

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Beyond Dose Assessment: Using Risk With Full Disclosure of Uncertainty in Public and Scientific Communication

Hoffman

Kocher²,

Apostoaei³

2011

Health Physics

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Evaluations of radiation exposures of workers and the public traditionally focus on assessments of radiation dose, especially annual dose, without explicitly evaluating the health risk associated with those exposures, principally the risk of radiation-induced cancer. When dose is the endpoint of an assessment, opportunities to communicate the significance of exposures are limited to comparisons with dose criteria in regulations, doses due to natural background or medical x-rays, and doses above which a statistically significant increase of disease has been observed in epidemiologic studies. Risk assessment generally addresses the chance (probability) that specific diseases might be induced by past, present, or future exposure. The risk of cancer per unit dose will vary depending on gender, age, exposure type (acute or chronic), and radiation type. It is not uncommon to find that two individuals with the same effective dose will have substantially different risks. Risk assessment has shown, for example, that: (a) medical exposures to computed tomography scans have become a leading source of future risk to the general population, and that the risk would be increased above recently published estimates if the incidence of skin cancer and the increased risk from exposure to x-rays compared with high-energy photons were taken into account; (b) indoor radon is a significant contributor to the baseline risk of lung cancer, particularly among people who have never smoked; and (c) members of the public who were exposed in childhood to I in fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons tests and were diagnosed with thyroid cancer later in life would frequently meet criteria established for federal compensation of cancers experienced by energy workers and military participants at atmospheric weapons tests. Risk estimation also enables comparisons of impacts of exposures to radiation and chemical carcinogens and other hazards to life and health. Communication of risk with uncertainty is essential for reaching informed consent, whether communicating to a larger community debating the tradeoffs of risks and benefits of an action that involves radiation exposure or communicating at the level of a physician and patient.

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Comparison of Doses and Risks Obtained From Dose Reconstructions for Historical Operations of Federal Facilities That Supported the Development, Production, or Testing of Nuclear Weapons

Cited by 3 publications

References 5 publications

Fate of Carbon Tetrachloride during Phytoremediation with Poplar under Controlled Field Conditions

Fate of Carbon Tetrachloride during Phytoremediation with Poplar under Controlled Field Conditions

Fallout from Nuclear Weapons Tests: Environmental, Health, Political, and Sociological Considerations

Beyond Dose Assessment: Using Risk With Full Disclosure of Uncertainty in Public and Scientific Communication

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