Tooth Enamel as a Natural Beta Dosemeter for Bone Seeking Radionuclides

EPR dosimetry was done on teeth from residents of villages along the Techa river, Southern Urals, Russia. The residents have a 90 Sr body burden due to massive releases of liquid nuclear waste into the Techa river in the early fifties. A long time after ingestion, strontium is only incorporated into the skeleton and dentine of the adults but not in tooth enamel. Tooth enamel therefore, is measuring the beta dose from the contaminated dentine. Based on experimental data of this study a first approximation of the ingestion dose coefficient of tooth enamel was found to be more than 5 times lower than the value given in ICRP 69 for the bone surface of the skeleton. A similar difference was found earlier for the dose absorbed in tooth enamel and dentine. The result of this study allows the supposition that the metabolism of strontium is very similar for tooth dentine and the skeleton.