The U.S. Department of the Interior recently included uranium (U) on a list of mineral commodities that are considered critical to economic and national security. The uses of U for commercial and residential energy production, defense applications, medical device technologies, and energy generation for space vehicles and satellites are known, but the environmental impacts of uranium extraction are not always well quantified. We conducted a screening-level ecological risk analysis based on exposure to mining-related elements via diets and incidental soil ingestion for terrestrial biota to provide context to chemical characterization and exposures at breccia pipe U mines in northern Arizona. Relative risks, calculated as hazard quotients (HQs), were generally low for all biological receptor models. Our models screened for risk to omnivores and insectivores (HQs>1) but not herbivores and carnivores. Uranium was not the driver of ecological risk; arsenic, cadmium, copper, and zinc were of concern for biota consuming ground-dwelling invertebrates. Invertebrate species composition should be considered when applying these models to other mining locations or future sampling at the breccia pipe mine sites. Dietary concentration thresholds (DCTs) were also calculated to understand food concentrations that may lead to ecological risk. The DCTs indicated that critical concentrations were not approached in our model scenarios, as evident in the very low HQs for most models. The DCTs may be used by natural resource and land managers as well as mine operators to screen or monitor for potential risk to terrestrial receptors as mine sites are developed and remediated in the future.

美国内政部最近将铀（U）列入对经济和国家安全至关重要的矿产商品清单。铀在商业和住宅能源生产，国防应用，医疗设备技术以及太空飞行器和卫星的能源生产中的用途是已知的，但是铀提取对环境的影响并不总是能被很好地量化。我们基于饮食和陆生生物的偶然土壤摄入对采矿相关元素的暴露进行了筛查级生态风险分析，从而为亚利桑那北部角砾岩U型矿山的化学特征和暴露提供了背景信息。对于所有生物受体模型，以危险系数（HQ）计算的相对风险通常较低。我们的模型对杂食动物和食虫动物（HQs> 1）的风险进行了筛查，但对食草动物和食肉动物的风险进行了筛查。铀不是生态风险的驱动因素；砷，镉，铜和锌是消耗生物的地面无脊椎动物的关注对象。在将这些模型应用于其他采矿地点或将来在角砾岩管道矿场采样时，应考虑无脊椎动物的物种组成。还计算了饮食浓度阈值（DCT），以了解可能导致生态风险的食物浓度。DCT指出，在我们的模型方案中未达到临界浓度，这在大多数模型的HQ非常低的情况下很明显。