Abstract
The research on methods for radiochemical determination of alpha-emitting radioactive elements is constantly evolving, and is essentially focused on reducing sample analysis times and using increasingly less aggressive and polluting chemical reagents. Even the most widely used chromatographic resins can be dangerous for operators and for the environment, and researchers try as much as possible to reduce the quantities used. In particular, an attempt is made to reuse the chromatographic resins at least a second time, also considering the fact that these reagents can also be quite expensive for a test laboratory. The present study presents a radiochemical method for the simultaneous determination of alpha-emitting isotopes of thorium, uranium, plutonium, americium, and curium in agri-food matrices and water, using a single commercially available chromatographic resin that is used twice in the same analytical run. The method, designed for laboratories that need to analyze many matrices for radioactivity monitoring programs, has proven to be precise and accurate, achieving very high values of chemical yield (> 75% in solid matrices, > 90% in water) and z-scores lower than 2 in the context of two important international proficiency tests.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The Italian Ministry of Health (Rome, Italy) is gratefully acknowledged for financing the Research Project code IZSPB 01/19 RC.
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This research has received a specific funding (code IZSPB 01/19 RC) from the Italian Ministry of Health (Rome, Italy).
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Gabriele Trotta: conceptualization, data curation, validation, and writing; Maria Antonietta Ferrante: formal analysis; Marco Langianese: formal analysis; Nicola Bortone: methodology, validation and formal analysis; Rita Damiano: formal analysis; Michele Nicolini: formal analysis; Valeria Nardelli: project administration and supervision; Marco Iammarino: project administration, supervision, and writing.
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Gabriele Trotta declares that he has no conflict of interest. Maria Antonietta Ferrante declares that she has no conflict of interest. Marco Langianese declares that he has no conflict of interest. Nicola Bortone declares that he has no conflict of interest. Rita Damiano declares that she has no conflict of interest. Michele Nicolini declares that he has no conflict of interest. Valeria Nardelli declares that she has no conflict of interest. Marco Iammarino declares that he has no conflict of interest.
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Trotta, G., Ferrante, M., Langianese, M. et al. Efficient Determination of Actinoid Elements in Food, Feeds, and Water by Single Extracting Resin and Alpha Spectrometry Detection. Food Anal. Methods 16, 1758–1768 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-023-02546-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-023-02546-w