210Pb AND 210Po CONCENTRATIONS IN ITALIAN CIGARETTES AND EFFECTIVE DOSE EVALUATION

It has been known for a long time that cigarette tobacco contains naturally occurring radioactive nuclides such as Pb-210 and Po-210. In this study, the concentrations of Pb-210 and Po-210 in the 10 most widely sold cigarette brands in Italy during the year 2010 were measured, and the effective dose to smokers has been calculated. The results of this study show that Pb-210 concentration ranged from 11.6 to 20.0 mBq cig(-1) with an arithmetic mean of 14.6 mBq cig(-1), while the activity concentration of Po-210 ranged from 13.1 to 19.0 mBq cig(-1) with an arithmetic mean of 15.7 mBq cig(-1), thus confirming previous results and showing that the radioactivity concentration was not reduced in the last few years. The annual effective dose for a typical smoker consuming 20 cigarettes per day ranged from an average of 55 mu Sv y(-1) to about 81 mu Sv y(-1). It is finally put in evidence the need to improve the knowledge about crucial data needed for accurate dose assessment deriving from the inhalation of both radioisotopes contained in the cigarettes, namely the dose conversion coefficients, which strongly depend on several parameters such as the inhalation speed through the mouth, the real fraction of radionuclide transferred from cigarette to mainstream smoke, the lung absorption behavior of the radioisotopes inhaled with mainstream smoke, and the AMAD of particles inhaled by smokers.