The excretion of 241Am and 137Cs from the broilers organs after long-term application

Abstract

Data, despite being crucial for internal dose assessment, is lacking on the transfer of artificial radionuclides from the environment to the food supply. Expanding the available information on these factors is important for the improvement of dose models for specific scenarios.This paper describes the results of a 70 day field experiment with broiler chickens on the dynamics of excretion of 137Cs and 241Am from the muscle, liver and bone of broilers after a 30 day application of contaminated feed.The radionuclide concentrations in the feed and the thigh muscle, thigh bone and liver of 54 chickens divided between grass meal and soil contaminated feed groups were evaluated by gamma spectrometry for 241Am and 137Cs.The obtained results confirm previous data on the dynamics of the excretion of cesium from organs, which can be described with a fast and a slow exponential curve of excretion.On the 70th day, following the 30-days application, 2–8% of the first-day activity concentrations of 137Cs in organs (muscle, liver, bone) were detected. In the first two days, activity concentration of 241Am decreases twofold in both liver and bone. 35% of the maximum activity concentration of 241Am remained in bone and 15% in liver on the last day of the experiment.