Radiation dose estimation for marine mussels following exposure to tritium: Best practice for use of the ERICA tool in ecotoxicological studies

Accurate dosimetry is critically important for ecotoxicological and radioecological studies on the potential effects of environmentally relevant radionuclides, such as tritium (3H). Previous studies have used basic dosimetric equations to estimate dose from 3H exposure in ecologically important organisms, such as marine mussels. This study compares four different methods of estimating dose to adult mussels exposed to 1 or 15 MBq L−1 tritiated water (HTO) under laboratory conditions. These methods were (1) an equation converting seawater activity concentrations to dose rate with fixed parameters; (2) input into the ERICA tool of seawater activity concentrations only; (3) input into the ERICA tool of estimated whole organism concentrations (woTACs), comprising dry activity plus estimated tissue free water tritium (TFWT) activity (TFWT volume × seawater activity concentration); and (4) input into the ERICA tool of measured whole organism activity concentrations, comprising dry activity plus measured TFWT activity (TFWT volume × TFWT activity concentration). Methods 3 and 4 are recommended for future ecotoxicological experiments as they produce values for individual animals and are not reliant on transfer predictions (estimation of concentration ratio). Method 1 may be suitable if measured whole organism concentrations are not available, as it produced results between 3 and 4. As there are technical complications to accurately measuring TFWT, we recommend that future radiotoxicological studies on mussels or other aquatic invertebrates measure whole organism activity in non-dried tissues (i.e. incorporating TFWT and dry activity as one, rather than as separate fractions) and input this data into the ERICA tool.