Abstract
Belarus is one of the countries most seriously affected by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. Although radionuclide contaminations in foodstuff have been well studied after the accident, intakes of radionuclides through whole diet samples were very rare in the literature. Therefore, we researched radionuclide intakes using total diet samples with gamma-spectrometry. About 30 whole diet samples were collected by a duplicate portion method from Belarus and incinerated in a furnace. Radionuclides in ash samples were measured with Ge-detector. In all diet samples 137Cs was found (detected). Daily 137Cs intakes were in the range of 2.4 - 90 Bq and geometric mean value is 8.9 Bq. Annual effective dose (0.42 mSv year-1) for Belarusian was calculated by using geometric mean value of the 137Cs intake. This annual effective dose was much higher than those in Japanese whole diets. Cesium-134 was found in only one sample, which showed highest 137Cs concentration in all samples analyzed. Daily intakes of 40K in Belarusian were almost the same as reported values in Japanese.
