Results of an international comparison for the determination of radionuclide activity in bilberry material

Radioactivity found in wild food products has assumed greater importance when assessing the total exposure of the population. For this reason, IRMM has been developing a candidate reference material for the activity concentration of 40K and the anthropogenic radionuclides 90Sr and 137Cs in bilberry samples collected in the Chernobyl region. In order to characterise this new material, which had been processed into a homogeneous powder, a CCRI(II) supplementary comparison was organised, piloted by the IRMM. The results for the gamma-ray emitters, 40K and 137Cs, are treated in this paper. The difficulties encountered in this comparison are discussed, in particular the preparation of reproducible volume sources and the efficiency transfer from SI-traceable standard sources to the measurement parameters of the test samples. Comparison reference values for 137Cs and 40K were calculated with coefficients of variation of 4 % and 7 %, respectively. These relatively high uncertainties can probably be attributed to the use of a secondary method and the mentioned difficulties.

WAETJEN Uwe;  ALTZITZOGLOU Timotheos;  CECCATELLI A.;  DIKMEN H.;  EMTEBORG Per;  FERREUX L.;  FRECHOU C.;  LA ROSA J.;  LUCA A.;  MORENO Y.;  OROPESA P.;  PIERRE S.;  SCHMIEDEL M.;  SPASOVA Yana;  SZÁNTÓ Z.;  SZÜCS L.;  WERSHOFEN H.;  YÜCEL Ü; 

2012-12-05

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

JRC66164

0969-8043,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC66164,   

10.1016/j.apradiso.2012.02.018,