Bioaccessibility of Fukushima‐Accident‐Derived Cs in Soils and the Contribution of Soil Ingestion to Radiation Doses in Children

Shogo Takahara, Maiko Ikegami, Minoru Yoneda, Hitoshi Kondo, Azusa Ishizaki, Masashi Iijima, Yoko Shimada and Yasuto Matsui

Risk Analysis, 2017, vol. 37, issue 7, 1256-1267

Abstract: Ingestion of contaminated soil is one potential internal exposure pathway in areas contaminated by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. Doses from this pathway can be overestimated if the availability of radioactive nuclides in soils for the gastrointestinal tract is not considered. The concept of bioaccessibility has been adopted to evaluate this availability based on in vitro tests. This study evaluated the bioaccessibility of radioactive cesium from soils via the physiologically‐based extraction test (PBET) and the extractability of those via an extraction test with 1 mol/L of hydrochloric acid (HCl). The bioaccessibility obtained in the PBET was 5.3% ± 1%, and the extractability in the tests with HCl was 16% ± 3%. The bioaccessibility was strongly correlated with the extractability. This result indicates the possibility that the extractability in HCl can be used as a good predictor of the bioaccessibility with PBET. In addition, we assessed the doses to children from the ingestion of soil via hand‐to‐mouth activity based on our PBET results using a probabilistic approach considering the spatial distribution of radioactive cesium in Date City in Fukushima Prefecture and the interindividual differences in the surveyed amounts of soil ingestion in Japan. The results of this assessment indicate that even if children were to routinely ingest a large amount of soil with relatively high contamination, the radiation doses from this pathway are negligible compared with doses from external exposure owing to deposited radionuclides in Fukushima Prefecture.

Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12694

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:riskan:v:37:y:2017:i:7:p:1256-1267

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Risk Analysis from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().