Biomarkers of radiation in the environment: report from Armenia Workshop in November 2017

Cresswell, T; Tsakanova, G; Wood, MD

Biomarkers of radiation in the environment: report from Armenia Workshop in November 2017

Date

2018-11-06

Authors

Cresswell, T

Tsakanova, G

Wood, MD

Publisher

South Pacific Environmental Radioactivity Association

Abstract

Radiation protection of wildlife (animals and plants) has improved over the last two decades with the development of a range of tools and approaches for assessing the impacts of radiation exposure to wildlife. While established radiation benchmarks for wildlife derived from controlled laboratory studies generally protect against both internal and external radiation exposure, recent studies suggest that radiation effects in the environment may be observed at doses below current benchmark values. it is often challenging to characterise wildlife radiation exposure accurately, especially for animals within heterogeneously contaminated environments. Biomarkers have the potential to inform exposure characterisation and impact evaluation; here we define biomarker as “A measurable biological response that provides information on the extent of radiation exposure that has occurred and/or the impact of that exposure." To advance the field of biomarkers of radiation in the environment (BRITE), a workshop was organised in Yerevan, Armenia in November 2017, which brought together more than 40 international scientists from a broad range of disciplines including environmental protection, radiation metrology, radiogenetics, radiobiology and radioecology. Supported by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), this workshop enabled knowledge exchange between leading scientists within these discipline areas, who have research interests aligned with biomarker development. This presentation synthesises the outcomes of this workshop, describing the current state of the art and proposing future research priorities for the development of BRITE. Topics discussed at the BRITE workshop included: (i) biomarker development — what we define as ‘low-dose’, how low we can go with current radiation metrology techniques and how novel use of techniques and datasets can advance biomarker research; (2) how low doses affect biological systems and how predictable the dose-effect relationship is; (3) relative effectiveness of biomarkers for risk evaluation — including whether they work for ‘low-dose’ exposures and whether there are ‘dual use’ biomarkers that inform on both exposure and impact; (4) biomarker use in the environment - whether the current biomarkers are radiation-specific or will respond to non-radiological stressors and whether we need different biomarkers for assessing population-level impacts; (5) key lessons can we learn from human research to support BRITE; and (6) biomarker use and responses — considering how biomarker use could be operationalised from a regulatory/accident response perspective. Several research priorities in the field of BRITE were identified: (1) understanding the difference between dose rate and total dose over the lifetime of the organism and associated dose-response relationships; (2) a need to study the same species across multiple environments with different levels of background radiation in the context of biomarker response; (3) prove causality of radiation-specific biomarkers under a scenario of multiple stressors; and (4) a requirement to focus on a limited set of organisms for biomarker development and screen sensitivity of ecologically-relevant species (e.g. keystone or ecosystem engineer species).

Keywords

Environment, Pollution, Wild animals, Laboratories, Radioecology, NATO, Dose rates

Citation

Cresswell, T., Tsakanova, G., & Wood, M. (2018). Biomarkers of radiation in the environment: report from Armenia Workshop in November 2017. Paper presented to the SPERA Conference 2018, "Bringing environmental radioactivity research to Western Australia", Perth, Western Australia, 6 - 9 November 2018. (pp. 44-45).