Whole-body to tissue concentration ratios for use in biota dose assessments for animals

Abstract

Environmental monitoring programs often measure contaminant concentrations in animal tissues consumed by humans (e.g., muscle). By comparison, demonstration of the protection of biota from the potential effects of radionuclides involves a comparison of whole-body doses to radiological dose benchmarks. Consequently, methods for deriving whole-body concentration ratios based on tissue-specific data are required to make best use of the available information. This paper provides a series of look-up tables with whole-body:tissue-specific concentration ratios for non-human biota. Focus was placed on relatively broad animal categories (including molluscs, crustaceans, freshwater fishes, marine fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) and commonly measured tissues (specifically, bone, muscle, liver and kidney). Depending upon organism, whole-body to tissue concentration ratios were derived for between 12 and 47 elements. The whole-body to tissue concentration ratios can be used to estimate whole-body concentrations from tissue-specific measurements. However, we recommend that any given whole-body to tissue concentration ratio should not be used if the value falls between 0.75 and 1.5. Instead, a value of one should be assumed.

Chronic exposure by ingestion of environmentally relevant doses of226Ra leads to transient growth perturbations in fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas, Rafinesque, 1820)

“…Eff orts to develop a specifi c framework for protection of biota range from the reference organism approach which was put forward by the International Commission on Radiological Protection in 2008 (ICRP 108, 2008), to more ecological approaches favored by the International Union of Radioecologists (IUR) Brechignac and Doi (2009), and the various European Union sponsored projects (FASSET, ERICA and PROTECT). Both approaches, however, suff er from the severe data gaps with only a few species having any information about biological eff ects of exposure (Lang et al 1995, Jones et al 2003, Strand et al 2009, Yankovich et al 2010, Adam-Guillermin et al 2012, although interesting sets of data exist reporting chronic eff ects of ionizing radiation on non human biota that were used to examine dose-response relationship (United Nations Scientifi c Committee on the Eff ects of Atomic Radiation [UNSCEAR] 2008). Where there is information it is generally laboratory-based, Impacts of chronic radium ingestion on fi sh 951 involves high dose acute exposures and concerns species of interest to humans either as models or as food.…”

Making the most of what we have: application of extrapolation approaches in radioecological wildlife transfer models

“…The CR meat-diet values for these species are similar to those for the meat of farm animals in IAEA (2010), which presents a generic value of 0.39 based on data for four farm animal species. Since Cs is relatively homogenously distributed throughout the body tissues (Yankovich et al, 2010a), it can then be assumed that, for Cs CR meat-diet z CR org-diet (where CR org-diet is the ratio of the radionuclide activity concentration in the whole organism to that in its diet). Currently there are few data with which to test our hypothesis for the transfer of other radionuclides to wild animals.…”

“…Estimates of f 1 were taken from IAEA (2010), which cites values from ICRP (2006) (2010) were, therefore, used together with typical dry matter intake rates from IAEA (1994) to estimate an average Sr CR org-diet across all five species for which F f data were available (cattle, goat, sheep, poultry and pig) in IAEA (2010). To convert CR meat-diet values to CR org-diet values, conversion factors from Yankovich et al (2010a) were used; if Yankovich et al contained no data for a given element, then conversion factors were estimated from or the data of Barnett et al (2014).…”

Voxel modeling of rabbits for use in radiological dose rate calculations

“…Voxel models are particularly useful in scenarios in which the radionuclides disproportionately partition into the specific organs/ tissues of mammals after internalization (Yankovich et al, 2010;ICRP, 1986;ICRP, 1993). For example, proportionally high accumulation of plutonium in bone (83% ± 10%) compared to that in liver (6% ± 6%) of mammalian wildlife at the former British nuclear weapons test site at Maralinga, Australia (Johansen et al, 2015).…”