Establishment of a radioactive contamination index in seawater from the Gulf and Pacific coasts in Mexico

Abstract

This paper intends to establish one radioactive contamination index in seawater based on the relation A1/A2, where A1 is the radioactivity due to the contaminant radioisotope 137Cs and A2 is the radioactivity due to the natural radioisotope 40K, both expressed either as Bq/l in seawater or Bq/g in sea salt. At a second step, the same volumes of marine sediments were detected, but in this case results were expressed as Bq/g (dry basis) in order to find an index of radioactive contamination which remains more or less unchanged in seabed. The first results obtained show the adopted units are suitable for proposed contamination index, which might be useful to measure the extent and importance of radioactive contamination in every sea region of the planet. Therefore, it is a proposal for a direct measurement at greater range, which could be compared with punctual results all over the world to avoid the panic.