Abstract
Bats are a protected species and as such may be an object of protection in radiological assessments of the environment. However, there have previously been only few radioecological studies of species of bats. In this paper, results for >140 measurements of 90Sr and 137Cs in 10 species of bats collected within the Chernobyl zone are presented. There was some indication of a decreasing transfer of 90Sr with increasing deposition, although this was inconsistent across species and explained little of the observed variability. There was no difference between male and female bats in the transfer (expressed as the ratio of whole-body activity concentrations to those in soil) of either radionuclide. There was considerable variability in transfer across all species groups. At two sites where there were sufficient data, Eptesicus serotinus was found to have higher transfer than other species.
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Notes
Numbers in parenthesis identify elements of the spectrometry system as illustrated in Fig. 2.
Species which live close to, or benefit from association with, humans.
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This paper is based on a presentation made at the second meeting of the Wildlife Transfer Coefficient Handbook Working Group of the IAEA EMRAS II programme (held at the IAEA, Vienna, 22–24 July 2009).
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Gashchak, S., Beresford, N.A., Maksimenko, A. et al. Strontium-90 and caesium-137 activity concentrations in bats in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Radiat Environ Biophys 49, 635–644 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00411-010-0322-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00411-010-0322-0