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Answer to Question #322 Submitted to "Ask the Experts"Category: Environmental and Background Radiation — Food and the Human Body The following question was answered by an expert in the appropriate field: Q
What is the 40K and 14C inventory in the typical human body? I would like it in Bq per kg by sex. Thanks.
A
Potassium-40 content of the body can be obtained from its natural abundance of 0.0117% of potassium and calculating the specific activity of natural potassium (30.5 Bg/g) using the half life (1.28 x 109 y). The potassium content of the body is 0.2%, so for a 70 kg man the amount of 40K will be about 4.26 kBq. 14C content of the body is based on the fact that one 14C atom exists in nature for every 1,000,000,000,000 12C atoms in living material. Using a half life of 5730 y, one obtains a specific activity of 0.19Bq/g of carbon. As carbon is 23 percent of the body weight, the body content of 14C for a 70 kg man would be about 3.08 kBq.I don't have the breakdown of body content by gender.
Gary Kramer, PhD
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