Radioecology discussion post/response

Radioecology Discussion Board Response and Post

Week 3 Discussion Board #2

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In the previous week's module you were presented with a paper called 'radioecology, why bother?' Now that you've had time to read and consider the "Radioecology: Why Bother" paper from week 2, submit a 1-2 paragraph written response on  one  of the following options:

1.) Provide response to article.

· Something in this article that you learned that you didn’t know before or find particularly interesting

· Something that you disagree with in the paper and why

AND

· A thoughtful response in favor of or disagreeing with another classmates post to the discussion board

2.) Provide response to this student below:

Carrie Carson

Yesterday Oct 9 at 3:45pm

One part that I found interesting, and since I am a novice in this area, I was unaware, is the amount of data missing from Table 3 on pg. 184 with regard to pork, goat meat, sheep milk, and poultry (Caffrey et al. 184). There is a huge population which relies on these products, however, it was stated in the article that “The amount of data for plants and animals that are not part of the western food chain is even sparser.” This seems unfair, really. Although there is some data, as the article shows, for the “bigger” isotopes like Barium, Cesium, Iodine, but those are not the only isotopes to be concerned with. The article talks about 36Cl being “a neutron activation product of 35Cl, which is present in small quantities in graphite, cladding, nuclear fuel, and other sources. It is persistent, with a half-life of just over 300,000 years, and is highly mobile in the environment as chloride anion.” (Caffrey et al. 189). Why is there little data for this isotope?

Another area that I was aware of that it existed but didn’t know the sheer volume of needed data, is the modeling programs that are developed and being developed “to predict movement of radionuclides in the future environments (up to 1 x 106 y)” (Caffrey et al. 185). For one, that is a LONG time into the future so that is pretty amazing and (of course we will not be alive to see it) it will be so exciting to see if the prediction models accurately determine the movement and numbers when that future year arrives! Secondly, the article notes eight considerations for the biosphere model – “1) radionuclide transport through many food chain pathways, such as deposition on soil and vegetation via irrigation water; 2) crop interception and retention; 3) radionuclide accumulation in soils as a result of long-term deposition by irrigation; 4) radionuclide leaching from the soil and retention mechanisms in root zones; 5) re-suspension of contaminated soil onto vegetation; 6) soil-to-plant uptake via roots; 7) transfer of radionuclides from feed to animal products; and 8) food ingestion rates of humans” (Caffrey et al. 186). That is a huge number of variables (not to mention when the article states the transfer coefficient variables which are numerous as well) to take into consideration and it would be interesting to know the differences in ingestion rates of humans long ago vs. today vs. what they predict in 1 million years. Since we have issues with obesity, I would assume our ingestion rate has increased dramatically since the early 1900s even. I would predict it to hopefully start to decrease as we are becoming more health oriented, but it’s not guaranteed.

Overall, this article was interesting and opened my eyes to the amount of missing non-human biota data as well as various ways research is being conducted to help fill these data gaps. I think it would be incredibly difficult to develop prediction models for the future. This article, as stated above, shows the number of variables considered, but then also states that non-human biota can have “large spatial movements” (Caffrey et al. 190). I guess researchers have their work cut out for them!