Surface air concentration and deposition of lead-210 in French Guiana: two years of continuous monitoring.

J Environ Radioact

Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l'Environnement, CNRS, Université J Fourier, BP 96, 38402, St Martin d'Hères, France.

Published: July 2003

To make up for the lack of data on (210)Pb aerosol deposition in tropical regions and to use this radionuclide as an aerosol tracer, a monitoring station was run for two years at Petit-Saut, French Guiana. Lead-210 concentration in air at ground level was monitored continuously together with atmospheric total deposition. The air concentration has a mean value of 0.23+/-0.02 mBq m(-3) during both wet and dry seasons, and it is only weakly affected by the precipitation mechanism. This result was unexpected in a wet tropical region, with a high precipitation rate. In contrast, deposition clearly correlates with precipitation for low/moderate rainfall (<15 cm per 15-day), while this correlation is masked by strong fluctuations at high rainfall. The estimated mean annual deposition over the last ten years is 163+/-75 Bq m(-2) y(-1). This provides a procedure for estimating this mean flux at other sites in French Guiana.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0265-931X(02)00111-XDOI Listing

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