Long term investigation of 137Cs in chicken meat and eggs from northwest Croatia

This paper presents the results of long-term investigations of Cs-137 activity concentrations in chicken meat and eggs from northwest Croatia for the period 1987-2018. The research has been done as a part of monitoring program of radioactive contamination in Croatia. The highest activity concentrations in both of these foodstuffs were measured in 1987 and have been decreasing exponentially ever since. The Fukushima-Daiichi accident in 2011 did not cause any increase of Cs-137 activity concentrations. The ecological half-life for Cs-137 was estimated to be 8.0 and 8.4 years for chicken meat and eggs respectively. The correlation between Cs-137 in fallout and chicken meat as well as between Cs-137 in fallout and eggs is very good, the respective correlation coefficients being 0.79 and 0.72, indicating that fallout was the main source of Cs-137 contamination in both foodstuffs. The estimated effective doses received by adult members of the Croatian population due to the intake of radiocaesium by chicken meat and egg consumption for the overall observed period are very small, 2.0 and 0.6 mu Sv respectively. Therefore, chicken meat and chicken egg consumption was not a critical pathway for the transfer of radiocaesium to humans.