Developing Adverse Outcome Pathways to support radioecological risk assessment: Challenges and insights.

Environmental pollution associated with long term effects, especially in the case of ionizing radiation, poses significant risks to wildlife, necessitating a more nuanced approach to Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA). In radioecology, current methods, as outlined by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), focus primarily on exposure and individual/population-level effects, often both suffering a lack of ecological realism due to the nature of data used, and, sidelining a big amount of critical non-individual effects such as sub-individual one like genotoxicity. This review aims to address these gaps by suggesting the integration of New Approach Methods (NAMs) and the Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework in the field of radioecology.

Host defense alteration in Caenorhabditis elegans after evolution under ionizing radiation.

Background: Adaptation to a stressor can lead to costs on other traits. These costs play an unavoidable role on fitness and influence the evolutionary trajectory of a population. Host defense seems highly subject to these costs, possibly because its maintenance is energetically costly but essential to the survival.

Radiation Adverse Outcome pathways (AOPs): examining priority questions from an international horizon-style exercise.

Purpose: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) Development Programme is being explored in the radiation field, as an overarching framework to identify and prioritize research needs that best support strengthening of radiation risk assessment and risk management strategies. To advance the use of AOPs, an international horizon-style exercise (HSE) was initiated through the Radiation/Chemical AOP Joint Topical Group (JTG) formed by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) High-Level Group on Low Dose Research (HLG-LDR) under the auspices of the Committee on Radiological Protection and Public Health (CRPPH). The intent of the HSE was to identify key research questions for consideration in AOP development that would help to reduce uncertainties in estimating the health risks following exposures to low dose and low dose-rate ionizing radiation.

Citizen science in environmental health research: A comparison with conventional approaches and creation of a guidance tool issued from the LILAS initiative.

Context: Public interest for citizen science (CS) in environmental health is growing. The goals of environmental health research projects are diverse, as are the methods used to reach these goals. Opportunities for greater implication of the civil society and related challenges differ at each step of such projects.

Tritiated thymidine induces developmental delay, oxidative stress and gene overexpression in developing zebrafish (Danio rerio).

Tritium is a betta emitter radionuclide. Being an isotope of hydrogen, it is easily transferred to different environmental compartments, and to human and non-human biota. Considering that tritium levels are expected to rise in the upcoming decades with the development of nuclear facilities producing tritium using fission processes, investigating the potential toxicity of tritium to human and non-human biota is necessary.