Background concentrations of naturally occurring radionuclides in Greenland and dose assessment
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Polonium-210 (210Po) is a radionuclide sentinel as it bioaccumulates in marine organisms, thereby being the main contributor to committed dietary doses in seafood consumers. Although seafood and marine mammals are an important part of the traditional Inuit diet, there is a general lack of information on the 210Po concentrations in the Greenlandic marine food chain leading to the human consumer. Here, we determine background 210Po concentrations in edible parts of different marine organisms from Greenland and provide a dose assessment. Blue mussels (Mytilus edulis), organs of ringed seal (Pusa hispida) and polar bear (Ursus maritimus) displayed significantly elevated 210Po concentrations in respect to all other studied organisms (p< 0.001). 210Po concentrations ranged from 0.02 Bq kg-1, w.w. in Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides) muscle to 78 Bq kg-1, w.w. and 202 Bq kg-1, w.w. in ringed seal muscle and kidneys, respectively. 210Po concentration ratio for edible parts increases in the order bladderwrack (Fucus Vesiculosus), northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis), blue mussels, and from fish species to ringed seal and polar bear. 210Po distribution in fish, ringed seal, and polar bear follows a general pattern, the lowest concentrations were in muscle, and the highest concentrations were in the organs involved in metabolism. The derived 210Po annual absorbed dose in edible parts of studied marine organisms are several orders of magnitude lower than the recommended dose rate screening value of 10 µGy h-1. Effective doses from intake of 210Po to Greenland average children (1.4 mSv y-1), and high seafood and marine mammal consumers (2 mSv y-1 for adults and 3.6 mSv y-1 for children) are higher than the world average annual effective dose due to ingestion of naturally occurring radionuclides. This work was partially supported by the Ministry of Environment and Food, Denmark, the DCE – Danish Center for Environment and Energy, Aarhus University, Denmark, and The Environmental Agency for Mineral Resources Activities (EAMRA), Greenland. Samples were collected during several field-work expeditions in Greenland as well as under the annual and biannual sampling under the Danish AMAP CORE programme sponsored by the DANCEA Programme. The Ministry of Fisheries, Hunting, and Agriculture in Greenland, the hunters and colleagues, and local organisers involved in these sampling are greatly acknowledged. Radon and its decay products are the primary sources of the population’s natural exposure to ionizing radiation and the second cause of lung cancer after smoking. A total of 459 radon (222Rn) measurements in 257 residential homes in south Greenland, encompassing 41% of the Greenland population, were carried out, and a dose assessment for adults was performed. A year-long continuous measurement of the indoor radon activity concentration has shown a range of ̴ 0 - 1300 Bq m-3. The annual average of indoor radon was 10.5 ± 0.2 Bq m-3 in Nuuk, 139.0 ± 1.0 Bq m-3 in Narsaq, 42.1 ± 0.7 Bq m-3 in Qaqortoq, and estimated 48.2 ± 0.6 Bq m-3 for South Greenland adult population. In South Greenland, the total number of residential homes where indoor radon exceeds 100 Bq m-3, 200 Bq m-3, and 300 Bq m-3 is 37 homes (15.0%), 13 homes (5.2%), and 8 homes (3.2%), respectively. The contribution of indoor radon to the annual effective dose to an average adult was 0.5 mSv in Nuuk, 6.5 mSv in Narsaq, 2.0 mSv in Qaqortoq, and 2.3 mSv for South Greenland. The estimated annual average dose to adults in Narsaq is higher than the world's average annual effective dose due to inhalation of indoor radon and higher than the dose to adults in Nordic countries as Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and several EU and non-EU countries.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".