Uranium content and dose assessment for sediment and soil samples from the estuarine system of Santos and Sao Vicente, SP, Brazil.

In this work, the uranium (U) content in sediment and soil samples collected near the Santos and São Vicente estuaries was determined using the fission track registration technique (SSNTD). The sediment and soil samples after oven-dried and pulverised were prepared in the solution form. About 10 microl of this solution was deposited on a plastic detector and irradiated at the IPEN-IEA-R1 (3.5 MW) nuclear reactor. After the irradiation and chemical etching of the plastic foils, the fission tracks were counted with a system consisting of an optical microscope together with a video camera and a PC. The U content in the analysed samples ranged from 3.12 +/- 0.55 to 18.3 +/- 1.2 ppm for sediments and from 3.21 +/- 0.63 to 11.5 +/- 1.1 ppm for soils or in terms of (238)U equivalent activity from 38.5 +/- 6.8 to 226 +/- 15 and 39.6 +/- 7.8 to 142 +/- 14 Bq kg(-1) for sediments and soils, respectively. These results were compared with other values reported in the literature for sediments and soils collected in environments similar to the ones studied in this work. Most of the values obtained in this work are higher than the world mean and are in reasonable agreement with results found by other authors for sediments and soils from regions considered as polluted or with a high level of radioactivity.