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Anthropogenic uranium signatures in turtles, tortoises, and sea turtles from nuclear sites
Conrad, Cyler Inglis, Jeremy Wende, Allison Sanborn, Matthew Mukundan, Nilesh Price, Allison Tenner, Travis Wurth, Kimberly Naes, Benjamin Fair, Jeanne
Conrad, Cyler
Inglis, Jeremy
Wende, Allison
Sanborn, Matthew
Mukundan, Nilesh
Price, Allison
Tenner, Travis
Wurth, Kimberly
Naes, Benjamin
Fair, Jeanne
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Abstract
Chelonians (turtles, tortoises, and sea turtles) grow scute keratin in sequential layers over time. Once formed, scute keratin acts as an inert reservoir of environmental information. For chelonians inhabiting areas with legacy or modern nuclear activities, their scute has the potential to act as a time-stamped record of radionuclide contamination in the environment. Here, we measure bulk (i.e. homogenized scute) and sequential samples of chelonian scute from the Republic of the Marshall Islands and throughout the United States of America, including at the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, southwestern Utah, the Savannah River Site, and the Oak Ridge Reservation. We identify legacy uranium (235U and 236U) contamination in bulk and sequential chelonian scute that matches known nuclear histories at these locations during the 20th century. Our results confirm that chelonians bioaccumulate uranium radionuclides and do so sequentially over time. This technique provides both a time series approach for reconstructing nuclear histories from significant past and present contexts throughout the world and the ability to use chelonians for long-term environmental monitoring programs (e.g. sea turtles at Enewetok and Bikini Atolls in the Republic of the Marshall Islands and in Japan near the Fukushima Daiichi reactors).
Description
Date
2023-08-22
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Publisher
Oxford University Press
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Keywords
Chelonian, Radionuclide, Uranium, Plutonium, Nuclear fallout
Citation
Conrad C, Inglis J, Wende A, Sanborn M, Mukundan N, Price A, Tenner T, Wurth K, Naes B, Fair J, Middlebrook E, Gaukler S, Whicker J, Gerard JL, Aguilera WT, Gibbs JP, Wolf B, Kattil-deBrum TK, Hagemann M, Seminoff JA, Brys T, Brown R, Derieg KM. Anthropogenic uranium signatures in turtles, tortoises, and sea turtles from nuclear sites. PNAS Nexus. 2023 Aug 22;2(8):pgad241. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad241. PMID: 37614675; PMCID: PMC10443656