Assessment of radionuclide pollution of medicinal vegetable raw materials in the central black earth on the example of the grass of the yarrow ordinary

Abstract

The Voronezh region traditionally is the most important region of crop production and agriculture. A research objective was pollution studying by natural and artificial radionuclides of medicinal vegetable raw materials in the Voronezh region on the example of a yarrow ordinary, collected across all territory of the area in urbo-and the agroecosystems which are influenced by various anthropogenic influence. Within carrying out a research in 36 exemplars of a grass of a yarrow ordinary and high layers of soils on which plants grew, the activity of artificial and natural radionuclides (strontium-90, cesium-137, potassium-40, thorium-232, radium-226) was defined. All exemplars meet the available requirements of standard documentation on activity of radionuclides. We used storage coefficients to estimate accumulation of radionuclides from soils in yarrow ordinary. Mean value of a storage coefficient of strontium-90 was 0.59, in different exemplars of area it varied from 0.48 to 0.74. Storage coefficients of cesium-137 fluctuated from 0.86 to 1.15 at an average 1.02. For thorium-232 the average storage coefficient bird’s is equal in a grass of the mountaineer 0.13 and accepted values in the studied exemplars from 0.07 to 0.31. For a potassium-40 the average storage coefficient in raw materials was 1.04 and varied from 0.86 to 1.12, and for radium-226 – 0.59 at variation from 0.51 to 0.81. Thus, cesium-137 and potassium-40 are more accumulated in grass of a yarrow ordinary.