Re: Dating of Water via Tritium Determination

[Christian Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>]

At 12:58 21.01.1997 -0600, you wrote:
>Can anyone provide information on laboratories that can determine the 
>age of ground water via tritium concentration determination?
>
>Don Munroe
>University of Florida
>352-392-7359
>Don@pliny.ehs.ufl.edu
>
>....................................................

Don, 

It is not possible to determine the age of ground water by measuring the
tritium concentration alone. You have to have a lot of information about the
aquifer in question and the flux of water. Tritium concentrations in
precipitation varied quite a lot during the last forty years due to
atmospheric nuclear tests. Usually ground water will be a mixture of many
different waters from many different times and so the tritium concentration
will be a "mixture" of many years' concentrations. Only if the tritium
concentration is zero, then you can say that the water must be very old and
has been cut off from the environment for at least about 100 years.

Franz
Schoenhofer
Habichergasse 31/7
A-1160 WIEN
AUSTRIA/EUROPE
Tel./Fax:	+43-1-4955308
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e-mail:		schoenho@via.at