Element and radionuclide concentrations in soils and wildlife from forests in north-eastern England with a focus on species representative of the ICRP's Reference Animals and Plants

Abstract

There are international recommendations that the environment (i.e. wildlife) is assessed for the potential impact of releases of ionizing radiation. The transfer of radionuclides to wildlife from media (e.g. soil, water) is usually described using the whole-organism concentration ratio (CRwo-media), and a number of assessment models use these values to estimate radiation exposure and risk to wildlife; however, there are many gaps in knowledge. This paper describes a study conducted in 2015–2016 to sample terrestrial wildlife, soil and water from two forests in north-eastern England. Sampling was targeted towards species representative of the International Commission on Radiological Protection's (ICRP) terrestrial Reference Animals and Plants (RAPs): Wild Grass (Poaceae family), Pine Tree (Pinaceae family), Earthworm (Lumbricidae family), Bee (Apidae family), Rat (Muridae family), Deer (Cervidae family) and Frog (Ranidae family); opportunistic sampling of plant and fungi species was also conducted. The dataset comprises stable-element concentrations for 30 elements, radionuclide activity concentrations for K-40 and Cs-137, and radionuclide and stable-element concentration ratios. These data have significantly increased the number of CRwo-media values available for the ICRP RAPs and will contribute to the development of the databases underpinning the ICRP's environmental protection framework. Data will be included in the international database of wildlife transfer parameters for radioecological models and hence are likely to contribute to model developments in the future. All data and supporting documentation are freely available from the Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC; https://eidc.ac.uk/, last access: 13 November 2020) under the terms and conditions of the Open Government Licence (Barnett et al., 2020 https://doi.org/10.5285/8f85c188-a915-46ac-966a-95fcb1491be6).