The author studied the conditions need to routinely estimate the radiation dose in chicken bone by repeated re-irradiation and measuring ESR signals. Chicken meat containing bone waspurchased in a local market and γ-irradiated at doses of up to 3kGy, generally accepted as the commercially used doses. The results show that points in sample preparation and ESR measurement are as follows: Both ends of bone are cut off and central part of compact bone is used for experiment. To obtain accurate ESR spectrum, marrow should be scraped out completely. Sample bone fragments of 1-2 mm particle size and ca. 100mg are recommended to obtain stable and maximum signal.
In practice, re-irradiating up to 5kGy and extrapolating data of the signal intensity to zero using linear regressionanalysis, radiation dose is estimated. For example, in one experiment, estimated dose of chicken bones initially irradiated at 3.0kGy, 1.0kGy, 0.50kGy and 0.25kGy were 3.9kGy, 1.3kGy, 0.18kGy and 0.57kGy, respectively.
