title: Radiocaesium and natural gamma emitters in mushrooms collected in Spain.
abstract: Mushrooms can accumulate heavy metals in general, including radionuclides found in the nature. However, little attention has been paid to the radioactive content of mushrooms collected in Spain and the dose for the population due to their ingestion. To address this, we analysed the contents of 137Cs, 40K, 226Ra and 7Be present in different species of mushrooms, according to their genus and nutritional mechanism. We observed that mycorrhizal mushrooms accumulate 137Cs more than saprophytes, and vice versa for 7Be. 40K and 226Ra are accumulated to the same degree by the two groups of mushrooms. We estimated the dose due to ingestion of mushrooms in Spain to be 2 microSv/year, and the contribution of 40K and 226Ra to be generally greater than that of 137Cs. The contribution of 137Cs to the dose was calculated by taking into account the results of an experiment carried out under the controlled laboratory conditions, which showed that approximately 98% of 134Cs was associated with the readily digestible fraction of the mushrooms.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Faculty of Veterinary, University of Extremadura, Avda de la Universidad s/n, Cáceres 10071, Spain. ymiralle@unex.es
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Baeza
authors.forename: Santiago
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hernández
authors.forename: Fco Javier
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Guillén
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Moreno
authors.forename: José Luis
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Manjón
authors.forename: Rosario
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pascual
mesh_terms: D000363:Agaricales / Q000737:chemistry*; D002588:Cesium Radioisotopes / Q000032:analysis; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D012990:Soil Pollutants, Radioactive / Q000032:analysis* / Q000493:pharmacokinetics; D013030:Spain; D014018:Tissue Distribution
chemical_list: D002588:Cesium Radioisotopes; D012990:Soil Pollutants, Radioactive