The aim of this research was to determine (210)Pb concentrations in rocks and soils of farms located in the municipalities of Pedra and Venturosa. In these farms, rolled blocks of mafic rock with a high percentage of U(3)O(8) were found. The concentrations of (210)Pb varied from 3.2 to 201 kBq kg(-1) in rock samples and from 195 to 86,400 Bq kg(-1) in soil samples. The high levels of radioactivity found in the samples, indicate the need to conduct more detailed studies to evaluate the risk of radionuclide ingestion due to milk consumption by the population in the state of Pernambuco.
Considerable amounts of biological material contaminated with artificial radionuclides were generated to obtain the efficiency curves for low-activity radionuclide analyses of large environmental samples. Likewise, improving detection geometry is also an important task, mainly for studies involving conservation units with a high level of biodiversity preservation. This study aimed to evaluate the Monte Carlo efficiency curves without generating contaminated material with artificial radionuclides for water and vegetation measurements. An in-house adapted Marinelli geometry was applied to reduce the sampled amount of biological material in the ecosystem, which was combined with the Monte Carlo assisted efficiency curve for a more sustainable radiometric analysis.
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