Plutonium, 90Sr and 241Am in human bones from southern and northeastern parts of Poland

The paper presents the results of our study on 238 Pu, 239 Pu, 240 Pu, 241 Am and 90 Sr concentration in human bones carried out on a set of 88 individual samples of central Europe origin. Bone tissue samples were retrieved under surgery while introducing hip joint implants. The conducted surgeries tend to cover either southern or northeastern parts of Poland. While for the southern samples only global fallout was expected to be seen, a mixed global and Chernobyl fallout were to be reflected in the others. Alpha spectrometry was applied to obtain activity concentration for 238 Pu, 239+240 Pu, 241 Am, while liquid scintillation spectrometry for 90 Sr and mass spectrometry to receive 240 Pu/ 239 Pu mass ratio. Surprisingly enough, and to the contrary to our expectations we could not see any significant differences in either Pu activity or Pu mass ratio between the studied populations. In both populations Chernobyl fraction proved marginal. The results on 90 Sr and 241 Am confirm similarities between the two examined groups.