Introduction to Radioactive Contamination in Food, Water & Environmental Samples

In a Nuclear disaster accident scenario, or NBC event, or criticality accident in a nuclear fuel cycle or Radiological emergency, it becomes necessary to check for Radioactive Contamination in and around the Nuclear accident or event. It may be necessary to measure quality of air, water, Dust, Rain water, food stuff, leafy vegetables, dairy milk & other commodities including minerals etc., for contamination.

Drinking water, Rain water and dust

Drinking water, rain water and dust may show signs of being radioactively tainted. It Is likely that there could be contamination of radioactive iodine & ceasium in waters drawn from lakes, rain water etc., upto several kms. Hence it is good to check for gross Alpha & Beta Contamination, as well as nuclide specific gamma contamination of these water sample.

Food stuffs, milk, dairy products, leafy vegetable, meat & fish etc.

Nucleonix systems has systems both portable, as well as laboratory installed systems to analyze for gross Alpha, Beta & Gamma contamination. Also in respect of gamma, RaC analyzer can be used to analyze for nuclide specific contamination including radioactive Iodine & caesium in food stuffs, leafy vegetables, meat, fish, milk & dairy products.

Half Life : Iodine & Caesium

Radioactive Iodine and caesium are by products of nuclear reactors which end, releasing radioactive contamination into the atmosphere in the event a major Nuclear disaster / accident. Wile iodine-131 has a radioactive half-life of eight days, caesium-137’s half-life is about 30 years. Checking for Cs-137 & I-131 contamination becomes more important on account of this.

Also for any Govt. or a country it may be a good practice to setup Radioanlytical testing labs to test Radioactive Contamination in all imports & exports entering & going out of the country, apart from sample testing in the normal sisuitation in the vicinity of Nuclear power plants.