Integración de las técnicas analíticas nucleares en la caracterización de peloides cubanos.Caso de estudio: San Diego de los Baños

Peloids are natural products (sediments) used in the medical treatment of different pathologies and due to its use in humans, the chemical characterization has become of great importance to establish the presence of elements or compounds with biological action to support its therapeutic use and to control their quality for therapeutic purposes. In this work, are shown the main results of the integrated application of the nuclear analytical techniques in the characterization of Cuban peloids exemplified through the case of study of San Diego de los Banos peloid. The use of nuclear analytical techniques for the characterization San Diego de los Banos peloid has allowed the determination of the inorganic composition (included the radioactive elements) with four fundamental purposes: (1) sediment dating, (2) establishment of the changes in chemical composition occurring during a meteorological natural process (3) evaluation of the quality of the peloid for its therapeutic use and (4) dose calculation to establish the radiological security. The analytical techniques employed were X-ray fluorescence (XRF), Low Background Gamma-Ray Spectroscopy (LBGS), Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) and Particle-Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE).