[ RadSafe ] Was Interesting Proposed Cigarette ProductWarningLabels

[franz.schoenhofer at chello.at]

Harry, yes there is someone to "counter" this. 

My experience is not so much due to active research, but rather literature. I had once an idea of a research project on uptake of radiumisotopes from fertilizers. So I started a literature survey. Very little was available about radium uptake from soil to plant, but what struck us, was that the amount of radium in fertilizer spread on fields was really negligible to the amount of radium already present in soil - so we cancelled this project. I take the liberty to assume that this would also apply to tobacco plants.

Rn-222 emanating from soil cannot be the reason of elevated Po-210 concentrations in tobacco - look at the half-lives! 

In the course of our investigations on the Po-210 poisoning of Litvinenkow we also came across the literature on Po-210 in tobacco. It was stated - and we believe that to be very reasonable, especially after being able to exclude the source from the soil, that the Po-210 is due to the deposition of Po-210 from the air to the very hairy surface of the tobacco leaves.  

If you have another explanation - please forward it to me!--


Franz Schoenhofer, PhD, MinRat
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
Austria
mobile: ++43 699 1706 1227


Best regards,
Franz


---- Harry Reynolds <hreynolds at energysolutions.com> schrieb:
> I believe most of the Po-210 in tobacco comes from the radon gas
> escaping the soil under the leaves which then decays to the short lived
> Po-218 which attaches to and builds up on the underside of the leaf and
> decays to Po-210.  I think the fertilizer contribution to dose in
> tobacco is primarily K-40 along with some uranium/radium/thorium.
> 
> Can someone confirm or counter this?
> 
> 
> Harry Reynolds
> ASRSO
> ENERGYSOLUTIONS
> 801-649-2219 Desk
> 801-349-9036 Cell 
> 
other settings visit: http://health.phys.iit.edu