Abstract
Squids, a member of marine mollusks, have been used as a "biological monitor" for evaluating the Ag-108m contamination in the marine environment, since the presence of the nuclide in the lever of squids was firstly reported in 1970. We reported that not only squids but also snails(gastropods), another member of mollusks, could be used successfully for the purpose, and showed that Ag-108m was possibly distributed rather uniformly from coast to coast and from surface to bottom in the coastal sea of Japan on the basis of the consistent values of the specific activity of the nuclide in the viscera of the mollusks. The present study reports the results of additional analyses of the Ag-108m specific activity in another species of mollusks including a species of octopus obtained in the fishry ports different from the previous study. The need for a more conprehensive investigation was also stressed in order to prepare information on the backgound level of Ag-108m in the marine environment of concern for the commencement of operation of the spent fuel reprocessing plant in due time. [J Radiat Res 44:429 (2003)]
