Activity levels of 210Po in marine organism consumed in south of Spain

Abstract

The distribution and behaviour of Polonium (210Po) in marine organisms has been and is now a subject of great interest because of their relatively high concentrations in comparison with those in terrestrial organisms and its relatively high weight in the doses received by humans via ingestion. However, depending of the specimen analysed and its relative position along the marine food chain, the 210Po activity levels can be quite different, even in several orders of magnitude. 210Po is primarily absorbed from water and concentrated by phyto- and microzooplankton, and then is transferred to the next trophic level along the marine food chains. In this work, the contribution of 210Po to the committed effective dose via ingestion received by the Spanish population have been evaluated, by determining the 210Po activity concentrations in an ample set of samples which can be considered representatives of the different marine organisms consumed in Spain. The obtained results show a quite high variability, preventing the possibility to fix a representative value for the 210Po contribution to the ingestion doses received by the Spanish population, but in general these values, due exclusively to 210Po, are higher than the average value assigned by UNSCEAR to the annual committed effective dose received by the worldwide population due to the ingestion of natural and anthropogenic radionuclides.