Sources of Polonium-210 within the troposphere

Abstract

Contemporary technical literature has given consideration to complementary sources of ²¹⁰Po (fossil, terrestrial, stratospheric, artificial). A discussion of the importance of these various sources, based on short-time measurements of ²¹⁰Po, of ²¹⁰Pb, of long-lived nuclides and of products representative of pollution, carried out in S-W France, is given herein. It is concluded that tropospheric ²¹⁰Po is of natural origin and derived essentially from the decay of the ²¹⁰Pb present in the atmosphere.