Measurements of Strontium-90 in the Australian Environment up to December 1960

THE survey of strontium-90 in representative materials from the Australian environment, commenced in 1957, has continued. As moro than 60 per cent of tho population resides in five capital cities—Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane—the sampling programme was designed to represent these population groups. In previous reports 1,2 data were presented for human bone tissue and precipitation to June 1960, and for dietary materials, soil and animal bone tissue to December 1958. The present communication gives the results, in Tables 1 A and B , from the examination of human bone tissue for the period July–December 1960. Table 2 summarizes data for other materials for the years 1959 and 1960.