Conversion ratios for the foodstuffs and biota environmental surveillance program

The foodstuffs and biota monitoring programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) comprises two of the five Environmental Surveillance Programs mandated by Department of Energy Orders, and LANL has conducted these studies since the early 1970s (ESR 1997). Because foodstuffs and biota commonly contain very small amounts of radionuclides in the edible portions of the tissue, samples are commonly ashed to concentrate the radioisotope(s) in order to adequately detect the element; therefore, results are usually reported in units per gram of ash. To compensate for the differing water contents in various matrices (gram of ash are usually two to four orders of magnitude higher than live weights), units in gram of ash are converted to units of gram of dry material--the standard representation of data. Further, results in units per gram dry weight are converted to units of wet weight in order to estimate radiation doses to the public from the ingestion of these products. This paper reports the mean ash to dry and dry to wet weight moisture conversion ratios for a variety of foodstuffs and biota that have been collected as part of the Environmental Surveillance Program at LANL from 1990 to present