Thermoluminescence analysis to detect irradiated fruit and vegetables - an intercomparison study A report in English and German

This report describes in detail an intercomparison study to detect the irradiation of fruit and vegetables with a dose upwards of approx. 1 kGy. The 12 participating laboratories determined the thermoluminescence (TL) of mineral contaminations isolated from coded samples. Papayas, mangos, strawberries and mushrooms, which were either non-irradiated or irradiated with doses of between 1.4 and 1.6 kGy were chosen for examination as well as potatoes, which were either nonirradiated or treated with 200 Gy (for prevention of germination). The results of this intercomparison study were largely identical with those of the thermoluminescence intercomparison study on spice products. Therefore, it was applied to publish the method in the official collection of methods under article 35 of the German Foods Act (LMBG). In this method the integration of glow curves in a certain temperature range is recommended. The threshold value for the TL signal to distinguish irradiated and non-irradiated samples is fixed at 0.6. Under these conditions, all the non-irradiated samples in this intercomparison study and approx. 66% of the samples irradiated with doses of 1.4 to 1.6 kGy would have been correctly identified. As expected, the potato samples treated with a 200 Gy dose were not recognized as irradiated after normalization of the TL intensity using a re-irradiation dose of 1 kGy. Nevertheless, much higher TL intensities were recorded for the irradiated samples than for the non-irradiated samples in the first TL reading. By using different re-irradiation doses for the same mineral sample or by determining the re-irradiation dose that is required to obtain a TL signal value of approx. 1, however, it is possible to detect samples given a dose of below 1 kGy. The doses used to irradiate these samples can probably also be determined. The report deals briefly with this modified normalization procedure. (orig./VHE)Available from TIB Hannover: RR 1068(1993,3) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman