BEHAVIOR OF URBAN DUST CONTAMINATED BY CHERNOBYL FALLOUT - ENVIRONMENTAL HALF-LIVES AND TRANSFER-COEFFICIENTS

This study has made use of the contamination of dusts in an urban area in Northwest England by Chernobyl-derived Cs-137 to investigate the behavior of urban dusts, in order that contamination levels may be predicted following a pollution episode. The dust activity concentrations were observed to decline exponentially for a variety of indoor and outdoor dust reservoirs. Environmental half-lives were calculated to describe this behavior. Transfer coefficients were also derived from the ratio of outdoor to indoor dust activity concentrations. It is believed that both these sets of parameters may be used to predict dust pollutant concentrations for other pollution episodes, where there is a single-spike contamination event or cessation of continuous contamination.