Environmental Modelling at Nottingham
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Radiocaesium Uptake by Fungi The fruiting bodies of soil fungi (i.e. mushrooms) often have very high uptake of radiocaesium. This makes them a potential hazard if they are collected and consumed by people (or indeed if they are eaten by food producing animals). In many cases mushrooms are the major route whereby radiocaesium contamination of semi-natural environments can enter the human food chain.
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There is an enormous literature which describes the available field data possible mechanisms of uptake and there have been a number of attempts to provide a predictive model for mushroon radiocaesium uptake. However we believe that it is probably impossible to model this in any applicable way using conventional approaches. This is because the factors affecting uptake by fungi are not quantitatively understood and involve a very detailed knowledge of the fungi's environment, and anyway vary over small scales. Consequently radiocaesium uptake by mushrooms is enormously variable, both in time, space and between species. There are some very general trends giving a rough ranking between species but even this is not reliable. However we have undertaken a statistical analysis to provide an applicable approach for predicting the food intake of fungi derived radiocaesium. We believe this may be useful for estimating population averages over space and time. |
