SREL Reprint #1756

Contaminated soil on Chernobyl vegetation

T. G. Hinton1, P. Kopp1, S. lbrahim2, I. Bubryak3, A Syomov4, and L. Tobler1  

1Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland
2Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado
3lnstitute of Cell Biology and Genetic Engineering, Kiev, Ukraine
4Laboratory of Ecological Genetics, Moscow, Russia 

Abstract: Resuspension of contaminated soil can increase human exposure to radionuclides through the inhalation and ingestion pathways. Exposure from ingestion occurs when plants are consumed that have been surficially contaminated from resuspended material. Although the importance of resuspension in prolonging the environmental transport of contaminants is appreciated, we are unable to predict the contribution of resuspension to the dose from radionuclides. The problems stem from not knowing (1) how different measurement techniques contribute to the wide variation observed among the data, and (2) using measurement techniques that are not efficient for gaining understanding. We compared four common techniques used to estimate soil mass loadings on vegetation and found significant differences in their estimates (p < 0.001). Samples were collected from a pasture near Chernobyl, and mass loadings were estimated from plutonium content, titanium analysis via inductive coupled plasma, neutron activation analysis for scandium, and a simple washing method. The washing method produced estimates of mass loading 10 to 30 times greater than the other techniques. Strong correlations (r2 > 0.80) existed among the results of the other three methods. The distribution of plutonium within the various-sized soil fractions, however, resembled that of 137Cs, the contaminant in whose resuspension we were most interested, more closely (r2 = 0.92) than that of scandium (r2 = 0.67) or titanium (r2 = 0.58).

SREL Reprint #1756

Hinton, T. G., P. Kopp, S. Ibrahim, I. Bubryak, A. Syomov, and L. Tobler. 1993. Contaminated soil on Chernobyl vegetation. pp. 407-421 In: R.L. Kathren, D.H. Denham, and K. Salmon (Eds.). Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Midyear Topical Meeting of the Health Physics Society: Environmental Health Physics. Coeur d'Alene, ID.

This information was provided by the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (srel.uga.edu).