The Transfer of Radiostrontium and Radiocesium From Soil to Diet

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Abstract
Radiocontaminants deposited on the soil in a temporally-localized contaminating event, such as a major nuclear reactor accident, can become incorporated into vegetation as a result of absorption from the soil by plant roots and then into the human diet. Models are presented to describe the time-development of such dietary contamination by radioisotopes of Sr and Cs. The characteristics of the local soil are represented in each model by parameters whose evaluation is complicated by the known strong dependence upon soil type (geographic location). It is shown how these poorly-determined soil parameters can be specified with some confidence by taking full advantage of predictive formulae which are developed empirically (by UNSCEAR [United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation] and by others) from analyses of 2 decades of localized fallout data; this is achieved by using the models to preduct contamination levels due to hypothetical, protracted fallout and comparing the resulting expressions with UNSCEAR predictive formulae.

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