Abstract
Environmental radioactivity monitoring includes the determination of radionuclides in foods since they are an important way of intake of radionuclides to the human organism. Moreover, knowledge of the levels of radionuclides in foodstuffs will inform about the environmental radioactivity background allowing to control possible contamination due to human activity, such as, agriculture activity, nuclear power plants or other radioactive facilities. The Environmental Radioactivity Laboratory (LRA) at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) performs
measurements on representative foods from all over the Comunidad Valenciana (CV). Those measurements are part of several monitoring programs promoted by the Generalitat Valenciana.
Samples of fruits, cereals, vegetables, milk, meat, eggs and fish coming from markets, agricultural cooperatives or small producers have been analyzed.
A gamma-ray spectrometry analysis has been performed in all samples. It has been detected 40K in all samples, 7Be in some of them and 131I in samples of lettuce and chard collected after the Fukushima accident (0.10 to 0.21 Bq.kg-1) Radiochemical separation of 90Sr has been carried out in some of the samples collected, mainly oranges and lettuce. The values range from detection limit and 1.26 Bq.kg-1. In this paper a review of the data obtained from 1991 to the present is presented.
